CLUBS OF Greater Poston 8/3/09 Dorr (milain f Antigated into becoming 2/20/09 GEORGE B. DORR: SOCIAL CLUB MEMBERSHIP Boston: Engineer Club Not a member though visited as guest. Saturday Club Not a member though Samuel G. Ward was a founder. Somerset Club 1874-1937 Tavern Club 1904-1932 Union Boat Club 1889-1913 University Club No evidence of membership though visited as guest Union Club No evidence of membership though F.C. Gray and Samuel G. Ward were founders at the outset of the Civil War. New York, NY Harvard Club. No evidence of membership though visited as guest. Washington D.C.: Cosmos Club 1921-1935 Dorr Clubs821 4600 00208 6L Social History of CONTENTS The Greater Boston I. INTRODUCTION 3 2. THE DINING CLUBS 7 Clubs 3. CLUBHOUSES 16 4. UNION AND SOMERSET 24 5.THE INTELLECTUAL CLUBS 31 6. CLUB GOVERNMENT 46 Alexander W. Williams 7. THE LUNCH CLUB 49 8. COUNTRY CLUB 52 9. TENNIS & RACQUET 70 10. THE YACHT CLUBS 77 II. WOMEN'S CLUBS 81 I 2 THE HARVARD COLLEGE CLUBS 87 13. FOOD AND DRINK 103 14. PROHIBITION AND THE CLUBS 114 15. ODDMENTS 120 16. ENVOI 125 17. THE SOCIAL REORGANIZATION OF BOSTON by Nathan C. Shiverick 128 18. A MINIATURE COOKBOOK OF CLUB FOOD 144 Soups 145; Entrées 149 Fish & Shellfish 152 Poultry & Game 159 BARRE PUBLISHERS 1970 Meat 163; Vegetables 170 Desserts 174 Photographs following page 88 Z 1 note: see Helen Home's The Gentle americans (1965) for remarks about child life INTRODUCTION (chapter 5,11,+18). see also Robert grant, Fourscore (Pp. 199f.). RECENTLY I wrote two papers on the social history of the Club of Odd Volumes, which enjoyed a mild success, enough at any rate to cause the committee on publications to decide to issue them as a book under the Club's imprint. This in turn prompted several peo- ple, among them Walter Whitehill, who had done an introduction to the Social History, to suggest that I go ahead and write the his- tory of the Greater Boston clubs. "Even if very few people read it, it wants doing" seemed to be their argument for my tackling the job. Most club histories, when they have been written, were usually published privately for the enjoyment of and as a service to their members. These little volumes are consequently often hard to come by, and it seemed a useful idea to assemble such fruits as they con- tain into one pudding. I have been particularly anxious to approach this task from the point of view of social history, for therein, it seems to me, lies whatever value the project has. Some years ago a handsomely de- signed book called Leather Armchairs, by Charles Graves, was published in England and in this country (New York: Coward McCann, 1964). It was intended to be a history of the London clubs, though it turned out to be more of a guide than a history. It proceeded chronologically from the earliest club, White's (1693), down to the most recent, the 1962 gambling clubs, Quent's and Clermont. It gave in each case the size of the membership, the town and country dues, the initiation fees, charges for meals and rooms. Introduction [5] The Greater Boston Clubs 3 tended to have better food than restaurants or hotels, on whom the Now, this kind of information is perhaps valuable for someone murrain of Prohibition lay more heavily. thinking of joining a club, but, especially in the shifting prices of Where to draw the line in this survey? I would include chiefly clubland, in a book it begins to become inaccurate from the day of only clubs that had a permanent residence before 1918 and limit publication. the country clubs to the half dozen earliest. The famous Boston Leather Armchairs starts well with a lively preface by P. G. dining clubs, such as the Saturday, the Thursday Evening, and the Wodehouse, creator of the "Drones" Club, a competent introduc- Wednesday Evening of 1777, should be touched upon, for they are tion, and all that rich eighteenth century material which took place an integral and important part of Boston club life. But they have within the walls of White's, Brooks's, and Boodle's. But thereafter no permanent houses of their own and gypsy about to members' the book, with its statistics and name-dropping, becomes dull. I homes, other clubs, and even restaurants. hope to avoid that, of course, but I believe it can only be done by a It may be asked why the Harvard College clubs should be given quite different approach and method than those chosen by Charles Graves. much attention, since they now play no great role in university life. Their role through officers and members in the life of most of the Greater Boston is a very good locality for club history. In the Greater Boston clubs is immense, if not always openly acknowl- first place there are a great many clubs, and some of them are old as edged. For example, of the 550 members of the Somerset Club listed clubs go in America. In Cambridge the Hasty Pudding-Institute of in the 1967 yearbook, there were some 390 Harvard graduates, and 1770 and the Porcellian Club have their origins in the eighteenth of these, 300 at least were members of final clubs in Cambridge. Of century. If you allow their origins as fraternities, at least four other the Somerset's officers since 1852 well over half fall into this cate- Sincerel Harvard "final" clubs date from the 1830S and 40s. The Somerset gory. It is common practice when proposing candidates in the Club celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1951, though it had started Somerset or Tennis & Racquet to mention, en passant, what club as the Tremont Club in the 1840s, which, to be sure, is not as old as they belonged to across the Charles. The Tavern is more squeam- the Philadelphia Club (1834), the Union in New York (1836), and ish. A long-time secretary of it writes me: "Harvard final clubs the Boston Club in New Orleans (named for the card-game pred- are a nasty word to our election committee and never mentioned at ecessor of whist and bridge, not in honor of Ben Butler.) Boston's its sessions." Nevertheless, out of a total membership in 1967 of Union Club came along in 1863. But the great dam-burst of club 240, there were twenty-three from the Fly, twenty from Porcel- founding occurred in the decades 1875-1895. The St. Botolph, lian, fifteen each from the A.D. and the Spee, fourteen from the Tavern, Algonquin, Puritan, University, Odd Volumes, India Wharf Rats, Country Club (Brookline), Myopia (Hamilton), Delphic, and doubtless a few from other clubs. So, you could say that over a third of the Tavern membership was drawn in a given Dedham Polo, Boston Athletic, City Club Corporation (Lunch), year from the Harvard final club pool. "Nasty word," indeed! Nahant, and Signet (Harvard), Mayflower (women), and Essex This, and the fact that at least five of them, Porcellian, A.D., County all date from this period. Fly, Spee, and Delphic, had permanent residences well before the Boston is also a good place in which to collect club history be- turn of the century, should justify their story in a later chapter. cause it has always been a town with a considerable scarcity of fine Their membership lists also turn up some surprises, at any rate for restaurants, especially in the Prohibition period. (Boston is still not those who regard them solely as snobbish drinking dens. Of the five a notable restaurant city.) When they did not eat at home, people Harvard Presidents of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt was were apt to patronize their club. And you could, in Prohibition as in the Porcellian (and Fly as a waiting club), Franklin D. Roose- well as now, have a drink respectably in your club, by means of velt was in the Fly, and John F. Kennedy was in the Spee. And, to various subterfuges which will be discussed later. Therefore clubs rticle: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 1 of 11 april 27, 2000 table of (111 is the weekend magazine of the harvard crimson. CONTENTS THE OLD BOYS CLUBS final clubs are only the tip of the iceberg. fm journeys to the heart of boston's elite club scene. Samuel R. Hornblower Years ago, a young Bostonian's quest for status began the moment he enrolled at Harvard. He needed to enter the right final club, the right country club, the right Boston club, the boards of the right charities and finally, if he reached the ziggurat of Boston society, Harvard's almighty Board of Overseers. His children would, in their turn, need to go to the right boarding schools, join the right societies and know whether or not the right wines were being served at the right time. Final clubs were anything but final. After graduation, Harvard society moved on to the plethora of elite clubs that still draw an exclusive membership in twenty-first century Boston. The Somerset, Union, Tavern, Algonquin, St. Botolph and-for women-Chilton Clubs represented the hub of The Hub. The stature of these clubs was SO elevated that no one could aspire to the city's first circle of power without joining one, or better still, several. Today, in Beantown, the rules have changed. As institutional stability vanishes, one no longer need frolic through WASP theme parks to claw one's way to the top. Other avenues to power and high society avail themselves. And while identity politics have by no means demolished these hallowed institutions, "diversity" is upon them. Just over a generation ago, Irish Catholics, Jews and blacks were not considered worthy of http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 rticle: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 2 of 11 membership. A woman's place was, well, in her own club, the Chilton-not in the den of men, in any event. At Myopia Hunt Club on Boston's North Shore, women golfers were forbidden to enter through the main door or linger in the lounge. More than a century ago, these reservoirs of blue blood began as a mansion away from one's mansion, the alternative to the city's less-than- appealing selection of restaurants and too-public hotels. These were places where men could smoke the mild cigar and sip a fine brandy while playing cards and catching up on the news from Europe. "There was a whole class of people that didn't have to work," says Hugh Davids Scott Greenway '71, a member of both the Tavern and the Somerset. PY Among their descendents in today's fast-paced urban Boston, the old ways, though not entirely extinct, are fast fading. "Lifestyles have changed," says Robert Minturn '61, a member of the Somerset Club. "Young people work-they have a sandwich at their desk and then go to the gym for 40 minutes. They won't spend an hour and a half at the Somerset in the middle of the day." Even the older crowd is more likely to power-lunch at Radius and later cap the day by working it off on the squash courts at the Harvard Club. And dinner? If anywhere, it will be back in suburbia with the kids. "It is very difficult for the Somerset." says James Righter '58. "There are no sports, no games The Somerset is great for retired people." Indeed the average member of most of these clubs is in their late fifties and sixties. Years ago, former Somerset President Richard S. Humphrey '47 was once quoted as saying, "One hundred years from now, we'll all be out of business and long forgotten. I just don't think that there is going to be a need for a place like this." From Humphrey, the pessimism may be understandable. As Minturn put it, "Rickey said that? Well, yeah, he's A.D." To gain admission to one of Boston's clubs, candidates attend a number of dinners over the course of several months. "Membership selection is an elaborate process," says Minturn, "They sound people out and don't officially propose them until the very end. This is partly to avoid an embarrassment." Members use the clubs for both business and social purposes. The intimate old-Boston ambience appeals to out-of-towners who are often brought up as guests. "At the Somerset," St. Botolph members have long chuckled, "they have the money; at the Union, they manage it; at the Algonquin, they're trying to make it; and at the St. Botolph, they enjoy it. The Chilton and Somerset http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 3 of 11 are primarily social. Even discussing business in the morning room used to bring a waiter with a silver platter and a small card asking the offender to refrain. "Even now," says Minturn, "flagrant displays of briefcases and papers, are frowned upon." Cell phones are a cardinal sin. At the Algonquin, on the other hand, there are no such qualms. "It is a business club," scoffs one member of the Tavern. The St. Botolph and Tavern Clubs are considered "artsy," and the Union "is full of business lawyers." Boston's British heritage gives the town, for better or for worse, a distinctly clubby, if stratified atmosphere. Though many of the traditio ns and aims of these clubs were laudable in their own day, they have inherited a dubious legacy of snobbism and exclusion. Election committees today struggle to attract a politically correct pool of candidates. Minturn insists, "there are plenty of people who are eager to enjoy a great meal and good conversation." The difficulty, though, lies in diversifying their membership. "There just are not too many takers," says one club member, who asked not to be named, "but it's understandable. If you were black, you wouldn't want to stick out like a sore thumb. My instinct is that the Somerset would be delighted to have more, but my guess is that [minorities] would not be too interested." A Taverner, gave another explanation: "These clubs are slow to reach out, but they've gone a long way in that direction. The turnover in a university, for example, occurs on a yearly basis. At the Boston Clubs, on the other hand, the turnover is one generation. People are there for 40 years-it takes time to build under those circumstances." Insiders contend that they are not attempting to mimic the city's meritocracy in any way. "Is it a meritocracy?" one Somerset Club member asked. "Not completely. Are [the clubbies] the people with the money? No. Are they the dot.com barons? No. They are the people who are thought to be interesting." He continued emphatically: "It isn't just Brahmins. I mean, my God! They've had New Yorkers and Yalies as presidents!" Has it come to this? In July 1987, the Boston Licensing Board strong- armed the elite Brahmin fraternities. They adopted a rule calling for the revocation of the food and liquor licenses of clubs that have more than 100 members, are used for business or professional purposes and choose members on the basis of sex, race, color or religion. The rule is worded to cover only those few clubs that were used by members primarily to conduct business over meals. Private clubs with a social orientation, like the all-male Elks clubs or the Knights of Columbus, are exempt. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 4 of 11 specifically exempted private clubs. And since private clubs traditionally have been acknowledged as possessing First Amendment protection from public-accommodation laws, efforts to open their membership to women met with little success in previous attempts. At the licensing hearing, some of the haughty practices of these all-male clubs were revealed. Alice Richmond, former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, testified at the time that she had been "humiliated" twice by the practices of the all-male clubs. One time she was forced to eat in a pantry while her colleagues dined in elegance. Licensing Board Chair Andrea Gargiulo did not threaten to have any liquor licenses revoked until a year later, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a challenge to New York clubs over a city rule barring membership policies that were discriminatory. This gave Gargiulo the green light. Once the gates swung open, there was no stampede of high heels, however. These bastions of maleness are, it seems, a bit too male. The parking is a hassle. There is too much booze. And while women are, in fact, welcomed, they often do not feel comfortable. Many of the first women who joined resigned, citing a lack of time and other priorities. Even so, many old-line members place their hopes in sexual integration, praying that it will keep these celebrated institutions from fossilizing into their Beacon Hill and Back Bay perches. THE SOMERSET CLUB 42 Beacon Street So exclusive is the Somerset Club, that one night in January 1945 when the club caught fire, the firemen ran through the front entrance before Joseph, the club's legendary majordomo, ordered them to go around back though the servant's entrance while he continued serving members their dinner. According to The Boston Post, "Although the fires created considerable excitement among the firemen and police who were detailed there, the club members were not disturbed in their dining room. They sat at dinner while the firemen fought on the first, second and third floors. The only recognition of the fire was the opening of one window in the first floor lounge in the front of the club to let some of the acrid smoke out. Otherwise there was no sign about the tightly curtained windows that anything unusual was happening inside. The club members continued to come and go, swinging their canes, undisturbed by the mass of fire-fighting apparatus outside. One, more curious than the rest, came out to the door with a glass of W hat looked like scotch and soda in his hand, but he did not remain long." http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.htm 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 5 of 11 The elegant Somerset Club, founded in 1851, occupies the mansion of David Sears, Class of 1807, designed in 1819 by Alexander Parris and built on the site of the farm formerly owned by John Singleton Copley. Four large oval rooms, two private dining rooms, a "morning room," a library and an immense living room in the Directoire style make up the core of the building. Beyond this resplendent salon are the ivy strewn walls that surround the Somerset's garden and terrace, known as "the Bricks," where members and their guests can relax and sip single malt scotch in utter tranquility. The Somerset has traditionally been the haughtiest and most prestigious of clubs, one in which social pedigree is, ehem, de rigueur. Some of the prominent members of the Somerset roster include former Harvard Business School Dean John H. McArthur, former Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Dean Theodore Eliot '48, former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox '34 and an aging roster of heavy-hitting Yankees-including retired industrialist Louis Cabot '43, former GOP gubernatorial candidate John Winthrop Sears '52 and former state senator William Saltonstall. They are always looking up and down the Charles for suitable academicians and physicians. The 570 or SO members have no use for parvenus and get-aheads trawling for business connections. Applying directly is the surest way never to be invited back. You will be "tapped" accordingly, if they decide to show an interest in you. During elections, it takes two black balls from the governing board to earn a rejection. "You really do have to know people," says Minturn. After voting to admit women in the wake of the licensing board decision, the Somerset Club started by offering memberships to widows of past members. As the wives of members played a large part in the club, "the changes went almost unnoticed," says Righter, "there were always women around, women without men. The widows were always invited." Some of the women who joined the Somerset in the last several years include the usual old New England families- Spauldings, Sargents, Storeys, Lymans, Gardners, Saltonstalls. In fact, two women now serve on the club's board. "Any club is by definition elitist. Even if it's the Irish American Hiberian Hall. You are there because you have something in common," Mintum says. THE UNION CLUB of BOSTON 8 Park Street http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 rticle: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 6 of 11 The oft-recounted legend of the founding of the Union Club begins during the Civil War. In 1863, as Col. Robert Gould Shaw, Class of 1860, and the 54th all-Negro regiment was marching past the Somerset Club, the members pulled down their blinds and hissed in disapproval. Shocked and horrified, Norwood Penrose Hallowell, Class of 1861, second-in-command of that regiment, reportedly led a group of his friends out the front door and formed the Union Club just down the street. Not until 1952 would a Hallowell finally agree to join the Somerset. This tale is greatly exaggerated. In fact, the greatest number of defections from the Somerset occured, not in 1863, but in 1865, following the death of Lincoln. Throughout the Civil War, a faction of the club was upset by the unpatriotic sentiment of their fellow clubbies who attacked Lincoln for his policies and ridiculed his person. Though there is no hard evidence pertaining to this great walk-out, Alexander Williams, chronicler of the Boston clubs, hypothesizes that an impolitic member may have risen and given a toast to John Wilkes Booth. As one of the founders of the Union Club would later remark, "We wanted a place where gentlemen could pass an evening without listening to Copperhead talk." Since then, the story has been the Union Club's gradual slide down the slope of Boston society. It has long been described as the "Rodney Dangerfield of Clubs." Today the club is overrun by lawyers. The Union Club occupies the original mansion of Amos Lawrence on No. 7 and 8 Park Street. The upstairs dining rooms each have a magnificent view of the Commons to the west. THE ALGONQUIN CLUB 216 Commonwealth Ave. The Algonquin is the most grandiose of the city's clubs, the only one with a house designed especially for its own use, rather than a converted residence. Its massive granite exterior displays two stories of porticoed balconies. The inside boasts an enormous second floor reading room and a massive formal dining room on the fourth floor with 50-foot vaulted ceilings. The fifth floor offers sleeping accomodations. Unlike clubs like the Somerset, the Algonquin Club, since its founding in 1886, is all about business. The Club was founded by General Charles H. Taylor, the same man who resurrected the Boston Globe. Prestige-wise, the Algonquin ranks second to the Somerset. Family bloodlines are not as consequential as the corporate credit lines. Capitalism proves itself in the Algonquin to be the great equalizer-in the early '80s, the club's http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 7 of 11 membership was predominantly WASP, but today its thousand members reflect the growing racial diversity of the city's corporate population. Some of its prominent members include former President of Boston University John Silber, former Bank Boston CEO Ira Stepanian, former Boston Herald GM Patrick Purcell, nightclub owner Patrick Lyons, hotelier Roger Saunders and P.R. consultant Pamela McDermott. They admitted their first black member in 1986. Despite being one of the first of the clubs to admit women, women still comprise a very small portion of its the overall membership: fewer than 100 out of 1,000 members. THE St. Botolph Club 199 Commonwealth Ave. The St. Botolph and the Tavern are both seen as "artistic" clubs. They are considered more intellectual, and their purpose is to reach into those realms beyond the mere conviviality of the clubs down the street. Much like the Tavern, the "St. B" brings together some of the city's leading personalities in the fields of academia, business, journalism and the arts. The bonhomie of the St. B is legendary. "It is like the Signet and the Faculty Club," says former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, a former member. Since 1880, when John C. Rope and Henry Cabot Lodge, Class of 1861, among others, signed the charter to initiate the club, men of the arts and letters have gathered for the promotion of "social intercourse among authors, artists and other gentlemen." A poem, read at Christmas dinner in 1942, gives some sense of who these gentlemen have traditionally been: Twelve hundred years ago and more St. Botolph, Saxon to the core With Saxon name and Saxon wit, Moved sweetley in his floruit. "The blueblood is no longer too visible," says former Atlantic Monthly editor Robert Manning, who is also a member of the Tavern. Some of the more well-known members include cellist Yo-Yo Ma '76, opera diva Phyllis Curtin, Noel Stookey, the "Paul" of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, acclaimed author Ward Just and poet Peter Davison. Every year, the club puts on its own rendition of "Twelfth Night." The club is home to the Litero-Culturati of Boston. Many are art collectors. In fact, years ago, the Club used to host a number of exhibitions. Boston's first Monet exhibition was at the St. B. At the turn of the century, the Women's http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 8 of 11 Temperance Union squared off with them, presenting petition after petition, but to no avail. The St. B would live up to the reputation of their namesake St. Botolph, the hard-drinking patron saint of the Saxons. Nowadays, younger members are setting a new example-hard liquor is no longer a staple. Litero-Culturati and other such cognoscenti prefer wine. THE TAVERN CLUB 4 Boylston Place The Tavern (1884) is said to be SO exclusive that the man who proposed forming the club, a teacher of Italian descent, was denied admission. Sort of. Another story tells how a man who ate with his toes created the club. Not quite. In fact, a group of young artists and like-minded Gilded Age Bostonian gentlemen would often meet together to dine at some of the restaurants in the Park Street area. One day a troup of vaudville freaks shoved their way through the entrance of the restaurant and demanded service. The "armless wonder" ate from his plate with his toes. The founding Taverners were appalled. One man, an Italian teacher, proposed that they find their own room. The group liked the idea, not him. The Somerset was too posh and the Union too dull, they decided, and the Tavern filled a certain demand in the Boston social landscape. The Tavern has always recruited members with an inclination toward the arts, especially the performing arts, in order to replenish the talent pool for the yearly amateur theatrical production. The Tavern produces an unparalleled spirit of loyalty amongst its members. The club's exterior is deceptively small. Inside, the Tavern houses a theater, a billiard room, an outdoor dining area, a big dining area and bedrooms. Enthusiasm, hospitality and the rich tradition of songs, remain undiminished by the overall atmosphere of gloom and darkness. "Incredibly pleasant," exclaims W. Shaw McDermott '71. "I love the place! It is a great place. There is an interesting cross-section of people who love the exchange of ideas." In the exclusive Tavern Club (200 members), founded by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Class of 1861, William James, Class of 1869 and William Dean, it is traditional to wear yellow, light blue, purple, pink or green evening waistcoats to signify the number of years a member has belonged to the club. The club was founded to promote "literature, drama and the arts." Today it more or less pursues that mission. The club is notorious for its formerly all-male musicals. Much like the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, members submit plays every season for selection and the winner is staged and http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 (2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 9 of 11 performed by the members. In the late '80s, the Tavern was perhaps the most vocal opponent to sexual integration. One production, included a song entitled, "We love the ladies." Its final refrain: "But we'd rather have the place in embers/ Than see them as regular members." At the time, Globe editorial page editor H.D.S. Greenway was quoted as saying: "There should be clubs for men, clubs for women, and, in this case, clubs for men who dress up as women." But McDermott insists that the atmosphere has not been lost with the admission of women: "The chemistry hasn't changed much. In fact, [sexual integration] has been a positive thing all the way. For men and women." "The Tavern," says James Righter, whose wife is a member, "is very much alive." The plays, which now include women, "are still funny," Greenway says. Admission to the club can be dicey for the club's small membership. "The first criterion is that the man be a jolly fellow," says Greenway, "you don't have to be a captain of industry." The club that counted John F. Kennedy '40 and Eliott Richardson '41 among its members, now still attract some of the most vibrant intellectuals of the city. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis '48, author James Carroll, a substantial contingency from the Globe including former Globe publisher Benjamin O. Taylor and former editor Tom Winship '42. There are the academics, including Professor of Social Anthropology emeritus Evon Vogt, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, and many other Harvard and MIT professors. The club is full of artists, professionals, musicians, judges and the like. Former Mass. Governor William F. Weld '66, believing the club to be a political liability, resigned before he ran for office. THE CHILTON CLUB 152 Commonwealth Ave. The city's most exclusive women's club, the Chilton Club, was founded in 1910. Mary Chilton, the club's namesake, was the only Mayflower passenger to leave Plymouth and settle in Boston. The club began in response to the Mayflower Club, another women's club but with a strong temperance majority. The founder of the Chilton, Mrs. Nathaniel Thayer wanted a club where wine and liquor would be available and where a gentleman could be invited to dine. The women who defected from the Mayflower were weary of the puritanical restrictions. When the Chilton was granted a liquor license in 1911, it was denounced by Rev. Cortland Myers as a "pest" and the "vestibule of Hell." "Drinking and smoking cigarettes by women," he said, "is the most disgusting influence in this city." The ladies pondered legal action, but nothing came of it. http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 10 of 11 Club historian Alexander Williams '44 recounts the naming of what social critic Cleveland Amory dubbed the "Female Somerset." One of the founding ladies lamented to her husband that they could not find a suitable name for their Puritan alternative. "Why not the Chilton?" said the husband. "Why the Chilton?" asked the wife. "Because Mary Chilton was the first to leave the Mayflower." Before the Supreme Court ruling and the opening of the club to men, the Chilton kept three entryways. One front door on Commonwealth Ave. for members only, another for the members and their guests off to the side and a staff entrance in back. Soon after the club opened, railroad magnate Charles Francis Adams '32 was barred from ever entering the club again after shoving his way through the front entrance before declaring: "I never use side entrances." Husbands have always been invited. Life at the Chilton has always been about pleasant conversation and intellectual discourse. Lectures, luncheons and theatre nights are the usual. Williams describes the eccentric Eleanora Sears during a ladies' luncheon in 1932. The subject of the conversation was the personality of Hitler. Ms. Sears finally lost her patience and demanded that someone tell her who this Hitler was. The other ladies expressed amazement that she did not know. To this she responded indignantly, "I can't be expected to know right off the bat the names of all the sophomores in the Porc." "The club is thriving," said Ms. Louisa Deland, who joined just four years ago. "Especially now, with the economy booming." The Chilton has always had a continued devotion to gardening, debutante teas, the Winter Ball and charity work for local hospitals, museums and other cultural institutions. The Chilton was the last to hold out in the '80s brouhaha over sexual integration. All set to seek an exemption, they made a sudden about face and admitted men, though only a handful. To date, no blacks, Hispanics or Asians have joined. But, says Deland, "It isn't elitist. It's just a group of like- minded people. I don't see it as a snobby or high brow organization." These clubs share at least one documentable feature in common-the era of their founding. Somerset was founded in 1851. The Union in 1863. Beginning in the 1880s, America's most English city saw the unleashing of a torrent of clubs: The St. Botolph, Tavern, Algonquin, Puritan, University, Odd Volumes, India Wharf http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fm 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 Article: The Old Boys' Clubs. The Harvard Crimson Online Page 11 of 11 Rats, Country Club (Brookline), Myopia Hunt Club (Hamilton), Dedham Polo, Boston Athletic (BAA), City Club Corporation, Nahant, Mayflower (women) and Essex County. Many are now defunct. These clubs flourished only partly due to the town's scarcity of fine restaurants. Up until just a couple decades ago, dinner at the Somerset, the Algonquin or the Chilton was considered infinitely superior to the Ritz, Locke- Ober, Maitre Jacques or any of the other fashionable restaurants of the time. According to the scholar Nathan C. Shiverick '52, the leisure bred by wealth creates a demand for an outlet to pass the time and expend energy and aggression. The conclusion of the Civil War ushered in great fortunes for some Bostonians. But Shiverick argues that more lies behind the phenomenon. In the 1880s, when the Irish gained municipal control of the city, the Brahmins were politically disenfranchised. The former ruling class of Boston reasserted itself by creating private charitable corporations and a network of hospitals, schools, almshouses. It was more than nobless oblige; it was a desire to recover some control over the city. Boston's clubs were [and still are to some extent] the "caucus rooms of the city's financial and charitable leaders." The Brahmin establishment felt impelled to play some part in local government. As they had lost control of municipal institutions, they also lost their trust in them. It was this distrust that led to the incorporation of museums, orchestras and other charitable ventures. It was this power grab that lay behind the founding of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Public Library. The creation of the private corporation is essential to the structure of the clubs, says Shiverick. It allowed for the formation of partnerships with limited liability: each partner would not have to risk his whole fortune if disaster struck in the case of, say bankruptcy or lawsuits. In short, the corporation could be used not only to finance a railroad, but also, an orchestra, an orphanage, a polo club equipped with an imported, famous French chef or, as Shiverick notes, a "caucus room." Thus, business, charitable and social interests all merged into a giant Brahmin front at the turn of the century. That front, moving with the intention of regaining some control of the city, mobilized itself in the clubrooms of Beacon Street mansions. And the old boys' network, still unassailable, was born. Samuel R. Hornblower '02 is a History and Literature concentrator in John Winthrop House who likes to toot his own horn. He hails from Los Angeles and will admit most anyone. http://www.thecrimson.com/fmarchives/fn 04 27 2000/article11A.html 9/8/2005 9/9/2017 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - RWE.org Chapter IX Clubs The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson RWE.org The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson RWE.org Chapter IX Clubs rwe.org/chapter-ix-clubs/ 12/16/2004 YET Saadi loved the race of men, - No churl, immured in cave or den; In bower and hall He wants them all; But he has no companion; Come ten, or come a million, Good Saadi dwells alone. Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it. CLUBS WE are delicate machines, and require nice treatment to get from us the maximum of power and pleasure. We need tonics, but must have those that cost little or no reaction. The flame of life burns too fast in pure oxygen, and Nature has tempered the air with nitrogen. So thought is the native air of the mind, yet pure it is a poison to our mixed constitution, and soon burns up the bone-house of man, unless tempered with affection and coarse practice in the material world. Varied foods, climates, beautiful objects, - and especially the alternation of a large variety of objects, - are the necessity of this exigent system of ours. But our tonics, our luxuries, are force-pumps which exhaust the strength they pretend to supply and of all the cordials known to us, the best, safest and most exhilarating, with the least harm, is society ; and every healthy and efficient mind passes a large part of life in the company most easy to him.' We seek society with very different aims, and the staple of conversation is widely unlike in its circles. Sometimes it is facts, - running from those of daily necessity, to the last results of science, - and has all degrees of importance sometimes it is love, and makes the balm of our early and of our latest days sometimes it is thought, as from a person who is a mind only ; sometimes a singing, as if the heart poured out all like a bird sometimes experience. With some men it is a debate at the approach of a dispute they neigh like horses. Unless there be an argument, they think nothing is doing. Some talkers excel in the precision with which they formulate their thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to remember others lay criticism asleep by a charm. Especially women use words that are not words, - as steps in a dance are not steps, - but reproduce the genius of that they speak of; as the sound of some bells makes us think of the bell merely, whilst the church-chimes in the distance bring the church and its serious memories before us. Opinions are accidental in people, -have a poverty-stricken air. A man valuing himself as the organ of this or that dogma is a dull companion enough ; but opinion native to the speaker is sweet and refreshing, and inseparable from his image. Neither do we by any means always go to people for conversation. How often to say nothing,- and yet must go ; as a child will long for his companions, but among them plays by himself. 'T is only presence which we want. But one thing is certain, - at some rate, intercourse we must have. The experience of retired men is positive, - that we lose our days and are barren of thought for want of some person to talk with. The understanding can no more empty itself by its own action than can a deal box. The clergyman walks from house to house all day all the year to give people the comfort of good talk. The physician helps them mainly in the same way, by healthy talk giving a right tone to the patient's mind. The dinner, the walk, the fireside, all have that for their main end.' See how Nature has secured the communication of knowledge. 'T is certain that money does not more burn in a boy's pocket than a piece of news burns in our memory until we can tell it. And in higher activity of mind, every new perception is attended with a thrill of plea-sure, and the imparting of it to others is also attended with pleasure. Thought is the child of the intellect, and this child is conceived with joy and born with joy.' Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student. The affection or sympathy helps. The wish to speak to the want of another mind assists to clear your own. A certain truth possesses us which we in all ways strive to utter. Every time we say a thing in conversation, we get a mechanical advantage in detaching it well and deliverly. I prize the mechanics of conversation. 'T is pulley and lever and screw. To fairly disengage the mass, and send it jingling down, a good boulder, - a block of quartz and gold, to be worked up at leisure in the useful arts of life, is a wonderful relief. What are the best days in memory ? Those in which we met a companion who was truly such. How sweet those hours when the day was not long enough to communicate and compare our intellectual jewels, - the favorite passages of each book, the proud anecdotes of our heroes, the delicious verses we had hoarded ! What a motive had then our solitary days ! How the countenance of our friend still left some light after he had 9/9/2017 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - RWE.org Chapter IX Clubs The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson RWE.org conversation naturally flowed, people became rapidly acquainted, and, if well adapted, more intimate in a day than if they had been neighbors for years. In youth, in the fury of curiosity and acquisition, the day is too short for books and' the crowd of thoughts, and we are impatient of interruption. Later, when books tire, thought has a more languid flow : and the days come when we are alarmed, and say there are no thoughts. What a barren-witted pate is mine the student says I will go and learn whether I have lost my reason." He seeks intelligent persons, whether more wise or less wise than he, who give him provocation, and at once and easily the old motion begins in his brain thoughts, fancies, humors flow the cloud lifts the horizon broadens and the infinite opulence of things is again shown him. But the right conditions must be observed. Mainly he must have leave to be himself. Sancho Panza blessed the man who invented sleep. So I prize the good invention whereby everybody is provided with somebody who is glad to see him. If men are less when together than they are alone, they are also in some respects enlarged. They kindle each other and such is the power of suggestion that each sprightly story calls out more and sometimes a fact that had long slept in the recesses of memory hears the voice, is welcomed to daylight, and proves of rare value. Every metaphysician must have observed, not only that no thought is alone, but that thoughts commonly go in pairs ; though the related thoughts first appeared in his mind at long distances of time. Things are in pairs : a natural fact has only half its value until a fact in moral nature, its counterpart, is stated.' Then they confirm and adorn each other; a story is matched by another story. And that may be the reason why, when a gentleman has told a good thing, he immediately tells it again. Nothing seems so cheap as the benefit of conversation nothing is more rare. 'T is wonderful how you are balked and baffled. There is plenty of intelligence, reading, curiosity; but serious, happy discourse, avoiding personalities, dealing with results, is rare : and I seldom meet with a reading and thoughtful person but he tells me, as if it were his exceptional mishap, that he has no companion. Suppose such a one to go out exploring different circles in search of this wise and genial counterpart,- he might inquire far and wide. Conversation in society is found to be on a plat-form so low as to exclude science, the saint and the poet. Amidst all the gay banter, sentiment cannot profane itself and venture out. The re-ply of old Isocrates comes so often to mind, - The things which are now seasonable I cannot say and for the things which I can say it is not now the time." Besides, who can resist the charm of talent ? The lover of letters loves power too. Among the men of wit and learning, he could not withhold his homage from the gayety, grasp of memory, luck, splendor and speed such exploits of discourse, such feats of society ! What new powers, what mines of wealth ! But when he came home, his brave sequins were dry leaves. He found either that the fact they had thus dizened and adorned was of no value, or that he already knew all and more than all they had told him. He could not find that he was helped by so much as one thought or principle, one solid fact, one commanding impulse : great was the dazzle, but the gain was small. He uses his occasions he seeks the company of those who have convivial talent. But the moment they meet, to be sure they be-gin to be something else than they were ; they play pranks, dance jigs, run on each other, pun, tell stories, try many fantastic tricks, under some superstition that there must be excitement and elevation :- and they kill conversation at once. I know well the rusticity of the shy hermit. No doubt he does not make allowance enough for men of more active blood and habit. But it is only on natural ground that conversation can be rich. It must not begin with uproar and violence. Let it keep the ground, let it feel the connection with the battery. Men must not be off their centres. Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear to any one. On these terms they give information and please them-selves by sallies and chat which are admired by the idlers and the talker is at his ease and jolly, for he can walk out without ceremony when he pleases. They go rarely to their equals, and then as for their own convenience simply, making too much haste to introduce and impart their new whim or discovery listen badly or do not listen to the comment or to the thought by which the company strive to repay them rather, as soon as their own speech is done, they take their hats. Then there are the gladiators, to whom it is always a battle; 't is no matter on which side, they fight for victory; then the heady men, the egotists, the monotones, the steriles and the impracticables. It does not help that you find as good or a better man than yourself, if he is not timed and fitted to you. The greatest sufferers are often those who have the most to say, - men of a delicate sympathy, who are dumb in mixed company. Able people, if they do not know how to make allowance for them, paralyze them. One of those conceited prigs who value Nature only as it feeds and exhibits them is equally a pest with the roysterers. There must be large reception as well as giving. How delightful after these disturbers is the radiant, playful wit of - one whom I need not name, - for in every society there is his representative. Good nature is stronger than tomahawks. His conversation is all pictures he can reproduce whatever he has seen he tells the best story in the county, and is of such genial temper that he disposes all others irresistibly to good humor and discourse. Diderot said of the Abbe Galiani: He was a treasure in rainy days and if the cabinet-makers made such things, everybody would have one in the country." One lesson we learn early, - that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion. We know beforehand that yonder man must think as we do. Has he not two hands, - two feet, - hair and nails ? Does he not eat, - bleed, - laugh, - cry ? His dissent from me is the veriest affectation. This conclusion is at once the logic of persecution and of love. And the ground of our indignation is our conviction that his dissent is some wilfulness he practises on himself. He checks the flow of his opinion, as the cross cow holds up her milk. Yes, and we look into his eye, and see that he knows it and hides his eye from ours. But to come a little nearer to my mark, I am to say that there may easily be obstacles in the way of finding the pure article we are in search of, but when we find it it is worth the pursuit, for beside its comfort as medicine and cordial, once in the right company, new and vast values do not fail to appear. All that man can do for man is to be found in that market. There are great prizes in this game. Our fortunes in the world are as our mental equipment for this competition is. Yonder is a man who can answer the questions which I cannot. Is it so? Hence comes to me boundless curiosity to know his experiences and his wit. Hence competition for the stakes dearest to man. What is a match at whist, or draughts, or billiards. or chess. to a match of mother-wit of knowledge and of re-sources? However courteously we conceal it. it is social rank and spiritual 9/9/2017 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - RWE.org Chapter IX Clubs The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson RWE.org He that can define, he that can answer a question so as to admit of no further answer, is the best man. This was the meaning of the story of the Sphinx. In the old time conundrums were sent from king to king by ambassadors. The seven wise masters at Periander's banquet spent their time in answering them. The life of Socrates is a propounding and a solution of these. So, in the hagiology of each nation, the lawgiver was in each case some man of eloquent tongue, whose sympathy brought him face to face with the extremes of society. Jesus, Menu, the first Buddhist, Mahomet, Zertusht, 1 Pythagoras, are examples. Jesus spent his life in discoursing with humble people on life and duty, in giving wise answers, showing that he saw at a larger angle of vision, and at least silencing those who were not generous enough to accept his thoughts. Luther spent his life so and it is not his theologic works, - his Commentary on the Galatians, and the rest, but his Table-Talk, which is still read by men. Dr. Johnson was a man of no profound mind, - full of English limitations, English politics, English Church, Oxford philosophy yet, having a large heart, mother-wit and good sense which impatiently overleaped his customary bounds, his conversation as re-ported by Boswell has a lasting charm. Conversation is the vent of character as well as of thought and Dr. Johnson impresses his company, not only by the point of the remark, but also, when the point fails, because he makes it. His obvious religion or superstition, his deep wish that they should think so or so, weighs with them, so rare is depth of feeling, or a constitutional value for a thought or opinion, among the light-minded men and women who make up society ; and though they know that there is in the speaker a degree of shortcoming, of insincerity and of talking for victory, yet the existence of character, and habitual reverence for principles over talent or learning, is felt by the frivolous. One of the best records of the great German master who towered over all his contemporaries in the first thirty years of this century, is his conversations as recorded by Eckermann and the Table-Talk of Coleridge is one of the best remains of his genius. In the Norse legends, the gods of Valhalla, when they meet the Jotuns, converse on the perilous terms that he who cannot answer the other's questions forfeits his own life. Odin comes to the threshold of the Jotun Wafthrudnir in disguise, calling himself Gangrader; is invited into the hall, and told that he cannot go out thence unless he can answer every question Wafthrudnir shall put. Wafthrudnir asks him the name of the god of the sun, and of the god who brings the night what river separates the dwellings of the sons of the giants from those of the gods ; what plain lies between the gods and Surtur, their adversary, etc. ; all which the disguised Odin answers satisfactorily. Then it is his turn to interrogate, and he is answered well for a time by the Jotun. At last he puts a question which none but himself could answer: What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son Balder, when Balder mounted the funeral pile ?" The startled giant replies: None of the gods knows what in the old time THOU saidst in the ear of thy son : with death on my mouth have I spoken the fate-words of the generation of the Aesir; with Odin contended I in wise words. Thou must ever the wisest be." And still the gods and giants are so known, and still they play the same game in all the million mansions of heaven and of earth at all tables, clubs and tete-a-tetes, the lawyers in the court-house, the senators in the capitol, the doctors in the academy, the wits in the hotel. Best is he who gives an answer that cannot be answered again. Omnis definitio periculosa est, and only wit has the secret. The same thing took place when Leibnitz came to visit Newton; when Schiller came to Goethe ; when France, in the person of Madame de Stael, visited Goethe and Schiller; when Hegel was the guest of Victor Cousin in Paris when Linnaeus was the guest of Jussieu. It happened many years ago that an American chemist carried a letter of introduction to Dr. Dalton of Manchester, England, the author of the theory of atomic proportions, and was coolly enough received by the doctor in the laboratory where he was engaged. Only Dr. Dalton scratched a formula on a scrap of paper and pushed it towards the guest,-" Had he seen that ? The visitor scratched on another paper a formula describing some results of his own with sulphuric acid, and pushed it across the table, -" Had he seen that ? The attention of the English chemist was instantly arrested, and they became rapidly acquainted. To answer a question so as to admit of no reply, is the test of a man, - to touch bottom every time. Hyde, Earl of Rochester, asked Lord-Keeper Guilford, " Do you not think I could understand any business in England in a month ? Yes, my lord," replied the other, but I think you would understand it better in two months." When Edward I. claimed to be acknowledged by the Scotch (1292) as lord paramount, the nobles of Scotland replied, No answer can be made while the throne is vacant." When Henry III. (1217) plead duress against his people demanding confirmation and execution of the Charter, the reply was If this were admitted, civil wars could never close but by the extirpation of one of the contending parties." What can you do with one of these sharp respondents ? What can you do with an eloquent man ? No rules of debate, no contempt of court, no exclusions, no gag-laws can be contrived that his first syllable will not set aside or overstep and annul. You can shut out the light, it may be, but can you shut out gravitation ? You may condemn his book, but can you fight against his thought? That is always too nimble for you, anticipates you, and breaks out victorious in some other quarter. Can you stop the motions of good sense ? What can you do with Beaumarchais, who converts the censor whom the court has appointed to stifle his play into an ardent advocate ? The court appoints another censor, who shall crush it this time. Beaumarchais persuades him to defend it. The court successively appoints three more severe inquisitors; Beaumarchais converts them all into triumphant vindicators of the play which is to bring in the Revolution." Who can stop the mouth of Luther, - of Newton, - of Franklin, - of Mirabeau, - of Talleyrand These masters can make good their own place, and need no patron. Every variety of gift - science, religion, politics, letters, art, prudence, war or love - has its vent and exchange in conversation. Conversation is the Olympic games whither every superior gift resorts to assert and approve itself, - and, of course, the inspirations of powerful and public men, with the rest. But it is not this class, whom the splendor of their accomplishment almost inevitably guides into the vortex of ambition, makes them chancellors and commanders of council and of action, and makes them at last fatalists, - not these whom we now consider. We consider those who are interested in thoughts, their own and other men's, and who delight in comparing them who think it the highest compliment they can pay a man to deal with him as an intellect, to expose to him the grand and cheerful secrets perhaps never opened to their daily companions, to share with him the sphere of freedom and the simplicity of truth.' 9/9/2017 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - RWE.org Chapter IX Clubs The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson RWE.org It is possible that the best conversation is between two persons who can talk only to each other. Even Montesquieu confessed that in conversation, if he perceived he was listened to by a third person, it seemed to him from that moment the whole question vanished from his mind. I have known persons of rare ability who were heavy company to good social men who knew well enough how to draw out others of retiring habit and, moreover, were heavy to intellectual men who ought to have known them. And does it never occur that we perhaps live with people too superior to be seen, - as there are musical notes too high for the scale of most ears ? There are men who are great only to one or two companions of more opportunity, or more adapted. It was to meet these wants that in all civil nations attempts have been made to organize conversation by bringing together cultivated people under the most favorable conditions. 'T is certain there was liberal and refined conversation in the Greek, in the Roman and in the Middle Age. There was a time when in France a revolution occurred in domestic architecture; when the houses of the nobility, which, up to that time, had been constructed on feudal necessities, in a hollow square,- the ground-floor being resigned to offices and stables, and the floors above to rooms of state and to lodging-rooms, were rebuilt with new purpose. It was the Marchioness of Rambouillet who first got the horses out of and the scholars into the palaces, having constructed her hotel with a view to society, with superb suites of drawing-rooms on the same floor, and broke through the morgue of etiquette by inviting to her house men of wit and learning as well as men of rank, and piqued the emulation of Cardinal Richelieu to rival assemblies, and so to the founding of the French Academy. The history of the Hotel Rambouillet and its brilliant circles makes an important date in French civilization. And a history of clubs from early antiquity, tracing the efforts to secure liberal and refined conversation, through the Greek and Roman to the Middle Age, and thence down through French, English and German memoirs, tracing the clubs and coteries in each country, would be an important chapter in history. We know well the Mermaid Club, in London, of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Chapman, Herrick, Selden, Beaumont and Fletcher its Rules are preserved, and many allusions to their suppers are found in Jonson, Herrick and in Aubrey. Anthony Wood has many details of Harrington's Club. Dr. Bentley's Club held Newton, Wren, Evelyn and Locke and we owe to Boswell our knowledge of the club of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, Garrick, Beauclerk and Percy. And we have records of the brilliant society that Edinburgh boasted in the first decade of this century. Such societies are possible only in great cities, and are the compensation which these can make to their dwellers for depriving them of the free intercourse with Nature. Every scholar is surrounded by wiser men than he - if they cannot write as well.' Cannot they meet and exchange results to their mutual benefit and delight ? It was a pathetic experience when a genial and accomplished person said to me, looking from his country home to the capital of New England, " There is a town of two hundred thousand people, and not a chair in it for me." If he were sure to find at No. 2000 Tremont Street what scholars were abroad after the morning studies were ended, Boston would shine as the New Jerusalem to his eyes. Now this want of adapted society is mutual. The man of thought, the man of letters, the man of science, the administrator skilful in affairs, the man of manners and culture, whom you so much wish to find, - each of these is wishing to be found. Each wishes to open his thought, his knowledge, his social skill to the daylight in your company and affection, and to exchange his gifts for yours ; and the first hint of a select and intelligent company is welcome. But the club must be self-protecting, and obstacles arise at the outset. There are people who cannot well be cultivated; whom you must keep down and quiet if you can. There are those who have the instinct of a bat to fly against any lighted candle and put it out, - marplots and contradictors. There are those who go only to talk, and those who go only to hear both are bad. A right rule for a club would be, - Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires people who are not surprised and shocked, who do and let do and let be, who sink trifles and know solid values, and who take a great deal for granted. is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election §0 as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character. The poet Marvell was wont to say that he would not drink wine with any one with whom he could not trust his life." But neither can we afford to be superfine. A man of irreproachable behavior and excellent sense preferred on his travels taking his chance at a hotel for company, to the charging himself with too many select letters of introduction. He confessed he liked low company. He said the fact was incontestable that the society of gypsies was more attractive than that of bishops. The girl deserts the parlor for the kitchen the boy, for the wharf. Tutors and parents cannot interest him like the uproarious conversation he finds in the market or the dock. I knew a scholar, of some experience in camps, who said that he liked, in a barroom, to tell a few coon stories and put himself on a good footing with the company : then he could be as silent as he chose. A scholar does not wish to be always pumping his brains he wants gossips. The black-coats are good company only for black-coats but when the manufacturers, merchants and shipmasters meet, see how much they have to say, and how long the conversation lasts ! They have come from many zones ; they have traversed wide countries ; they know each his own arts, and the cunning artisans of his craft they have seen the best and the worst of men. Their knowledge contradicts the popular opinion and your own on many points. Things which you fancy wrong they know to be right and profitable things which you reckon superstitious they know to be true. They have found virtue in the strangest homes and in the rich store of their adventures are instances and examples which you have been seeking in vain for years, and which they suddenly and unwittingly offer you. I remember a social experiment in this direction, wherein it appeared that each of the members fancied he was in need of society, but himself unpresentable. On trial they all found that they could be tolerated by, and could tolerate, each other. Nay, the tendency to extreme self-respect which hesitated to join in a club was running rapidly down to abject admiration of each other, when the club was broken up by new combinations. The use of the hospitality of the club hardly needs explanation. Men are unbent and social at table and I remember it was explained to me, in a Southern city, that it was impossible to set any public charity on foot unless through a tavern dinner. I do not think our metropolitan charities would plead the same necessity but to a club met for conversation a supper is a good basis, as it disarms all parties and puts pedantry and business to the door. All are in good humor and at leisure, which are the first conditions of discourse the ordinary reserves are thrown off, experienced men meet with the freedom of boys, and, sooner or later, impart all that is singular in their experience. The hospitalities of clubs are easily doubt the sunners of wits and philosonhers acquire much lustre by time and 9/9/2017 The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - RWE.org Chapter IX Clubs - The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson RWE.org When we such clusters had As made us nobly wild, not mad; And yet, each verse of thine Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." , Such friends make the feast satisfying; and I notice that it was when things went prosperously, and the company was full of honor, at the banquet of the Cid, that " the guests all were joyful, and agreed in one thing, - that they had not eaten better for three years." I need only hint the value of the club for bringing masters in their several arts to compare and expand their views, to come to an under-standing on these points, and so that their united opinion shall have its just influence on public questions of education and politics. It is agreed that in the sections of the British Association more information is mutually and effectually communicated, in a few hours, than in many months of ordinary correspondence and the printing and transmission of ponderous reports. We know that 1' homme de lettres is a little wary, and not fond of giving away his seed-corn ; but there is an infallible way to draw him out, namely, by having as good as he. If you have Tuscaroora and he Canada, he may exchange kernel for kernel. If his discretion is incurable, and he dare not speak of fairy gold, he will yet tell what new books he has found, what old ones recovered, what men write and read abroad. A principal purpose also is the hospitality of the club, as a means of receiving a worthy foreigner with mutual advantage. Every man brings into society some partial thought and local culture. We need range and alternation of topics and variety of minds. One likes in a companion a phlegm which it is a triumph to disturb, and, not less, to make in an old acquaintance unexpected discoveries of scope and power through the advantage of an inspiring subject. Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. 1 But while we look complacently at these obvious pleasures and values of good companions, I do not forget that Nature is always very much in earnest, and that her great gifts have something serious and stern. When we look for the highest benefits of conversation, the Spartan rule of one to one is usually enforced. Discourse, when it rises high-est and searches deepest, when it lifts us into that mood out of which thoughts come that remain as stars in our firmament, is between two.' BEACON HILL Mount Vernon Street & Beacon Street BACK SAY 4 S 2 3 Commonwealth Avenue 7 Click to enlarge. (Photographs by Toan Trinh) 1. The Harvard Club of Boston 374 Commonwealth Ave. Founded: 1908 Details: Open to Harvard alums, employees, and their relatives, the club does offer entry to anyone (sans a Harvard degree) willing to drop up to $6 million on one of its new condos, built to finance a recent renovation. xfinity Xfinity Sponsored Get up to speed xfinity with Xfinity Internet. xfinity xFr Most Active Profiles : The Simple. Easy. Awesome. Members Only: Boston's Private Social Clubs Page 3 of 9 Classic moment: Dick Cheney had to sneak in through the back door for a speaking engagement in 2006 due to the throngs of protesters. 2. The Algonquin Club 217 Commonwealth Ave. Founded: 1888 Details: Like Fight Club, if you're in Algonquin, you don't talk about Algonquin. Word is the mortgage was burned long ago and its ashes were placed in a tiny box next to the main fireplace in the reading room. Presidential power: Calvin Coolidge. Pretend power: Clark Rockefeller. 3. St. Botolph Club 199 Commonwealth Ave. Founded: 1880 Details: Founded for black-sheep bluebloods (those moody creative types), the club's foundation gives away approximately $75,000 a year in grants to young New England musicians, painters, poets, and writers. Artistic bona fides: The roster includes John Quincy Adams, John Singer Sargent, and Robert Frost. 4. The College Club of Boston 44 Commonwealth Ave. Founded: 1890 Details: Once a haven for well-bred Wellesley and Smith grads, this elaborate brownstone now serves as a hub for the Lean In crowd. Male presence: Literary visitors have included Mark Twain and Vladimir Nabokov. 5. Somerset Club 42 Beacon St. Founded: 1852 https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2015/04/28/boston-private-social-clubs/ 2/18/2020 Members Only: Boston's Private Social Clubs Page 4 of 9 Details: The stone wall with security detail out front underscores this club's rep as the snootiest of the bunch. When a fire broke out in the kitchen in the 1940s, firemen had to enter through the servants' entrance to avoid disrupting the ladies and gents lunching in the dining room. Notable guests: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Theodore Roosevelt have graced the Somerset's hallowed halls. 6. Club of Odd Volumes 77 Mount Vernon St. Founded: 1887 Details: Think: bibliophiles, books, and bow ties. "They are the epitome of the stereotypical old- world, elegant, intellectually curious Bostonians," says one club visitor. The interior is like a time machine: An ancient black rotary telephone still adorns the coat room. Making history: Winston Churchill stopped by for a visit in 1949. 7. Union Club of Boston 8 Park St. Founded: 1863 Details: During the Civil War, members of the Somerset Club split along political lines. In response, Somerset defectors formed the Union Club, which demanded "unqualified loyalty to the constitution and the Union of our United States, and unwavering support of the Federal Government in effort for the suppression of the rebellion." Lineage: Past members include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Josiah Quincy. You Might Also Like Boston Picnic Guide: Where to Order, and Where to Eat https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2015/04/28/boston-private-social-clubs/ 2/18/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Page 1 of 2 Massachusetts Historical Society ABIGAIL Founded 1791 the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Search Hearlings Titles History Help ABIGAIL Home Database Name: Massachusetts Historical Society Search Request: Keyword Anywhere = clubs. massachusetts. boston Search Results: Displaying 3 of 100003 entries Previous Next Bibliographic Holdings Table of Contents MARC View The clubs of Boston : containing a complete list of members and addresses. Relevance: Format: Book Call number(s): HS2725.B6 A1 1891 Place Request Title: The clubs of Boston : containing a complete list of members and addresses of all Boston clubs of social and business prominence. Publisher: Boston : N. Wilson, 1891. Description: 442 p. : ill. ; 20 cm. Subject(s): Societies --Massachusetts -Boston. Clubs -Massachusetts -Boston. Previous Next Record Options Select Download Format Full Record Format for Print/Save Enter your email address: Email http://balthazaar.masshist.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=3&ti=1,3&Search%5FArg=clubs... 3/1/2020 THE CHARTER AND BY-LAWS OF THE COLONIAL CLUB OF CAMBRIDGE WITH A LIST OF THE OFFICERS AND MEMBERS CLUB HOUSE 20 QUINCY STREET LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 3 CAMBRIDGE Printed at the Riverside Press 1894 Digitized by Original from INTERNET ARCHIVE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA No. 4074. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. BE IT KNOWN that whereas T. W. Higginson, James J. Myers, Henry H. Gilmore, Charles W. Eliot, Alvin F. Sort- well, Joseph G. Thorp, Jr., C. W. Kingsley, Henry P. Wal- cott, William A. Munroe, Charles J. McIntire, Daniel U. Chamberlin, Edmund Reardon, and Edmund A. Whitman have associated themselves with the intention of forming a corporation under the name of THE COLONIAL CLUB, for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a place for a reading- room, library, and social intercourse, and have complied with the provisions of the Statutes of this Commonwealth in such case made and provided, as appears from the certificate of the President, Treasurer, and Directors of said corporation, duly approved by the Commissioner of Corporations, and recorded in this office. Now, THEREFORE, I, Henry B. Peirce, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby certify that said T. W. Higginson, J. J. Myers, H. H. Gilmore, C. W. Eliot, A. F. Sortwell, J. G. Thorp, Jr., C. W. Kingsley, H. P. Wal- cott, W. A. Munroe, C. J. McIntire, D. U. Chamberlin, E. Reardon and E. A. Whitman, their associates and successors, are legally organized and established as and are hereby made an existing corporation under the name of THE COLONIAL CLUB, with the powers, rights, and privileges, and subject to the limitations, duties, and restrictions which by law appertain thereto. WITNESS my official signature hereunto subscribed, and the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachu- { SEAL } setts hereunto affixed this fourteenth day of April in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hun- dred and ninety. HENRY B. PEIRCE, Secretary of the Commonwealth. Digitized by Original from INTERNET ARCHIVE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 2/29/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Massachusetts Historical Society ABIGAIL Founded 1791 the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Search Headings Titles History Help ABIGAIL Home Database Name: Massachusetts Historical Society Search Request: Subject Browse = Clubs Massachusetts Boston. Search Results: Displaying 24 of 91 entries Previous Next Bibliographic Holdings Table of Contents MARC View Club of Odd Volumes records, Format: Mixed Material Call number(s): Ms. N-999 Place Request Creator: Club of Odd Volumes. Title: Club of Odd Volumes records, 1887-1925. Description: 2 vols. Scope: Copied minutes of the regular, annual, and Executive Committee meetings of the Club of Odd Volumes of Boston, 1887-1925. The objects of the club are "the promotion of literary and artistic tastes; the study of the arts as applied to book-making; the establishment and maintenance of a reference library; and exhibits of a special or instructive character." Local notes: Formerly cataloged as "Club of Odd." Old shelf mark: 38.13. 2/29/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Massachusetts Historical Society ABIGAIL Founded 1791 the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Search Headler Titles History Help ABIGAIL Home Database Name: Massachusetts Historical Society Search Request: Keyword Anywhere = charles william eliot Search Results: Displaying 11 of 1000011 entries Previous Next Bibliographic Holdings Table of Contents MARC View Examiner Club (Boston, Mass.) records, Relevance: Format: Mixed Material Call number(s): Ms. N-1207 Place Request Why are there 2 request buttons? P-050 1 reel microfilm vol. 1-4 only. Place Request Creator: Examiner Club (Boston, Mass.) Title: Examiner Club (Boston, Mass.) records, 1829-2013. Description: 11 boxes. Restrictions: One box of additions, 1994-2013, is closed to researchers and will be open in 5-year increments beginning 1 Jan. 2020. 2/29/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Scope: Records of the Examiner Club, founded in 1863 as a dining club by former friends and editors of the "Christian Examiner"--Joseph -- H. Allen, James Freeman Clarke, Edward Everett Hale, Frederic Henry Hedge, John Weiss, and Edwin P. Whipple--detailing the financial and administrative history of the club. Included are records of the club's precursor, the Christian Examiner Society, from 1829-1863; records of the secretary (1863-1963) and treasurer (1863-1935); and general correspondence (1919-1935), as well as the constitution and by-laws, membership lists, clippings, photographs of early members, and several addresses delivered at meetings. Later members include: John Albion Andrew, Edward Atkinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Arthur Dehon Little, Charles Eliot Norton, Francis Parkman, Josiah Phillips Quincy, and Justin Winsor. Additional forms available: Records, 1829-1902 (vols. 1-4) on microfilm, 1 reel, P-50. Subject(s): Clubs -Massachusetts --Boston. Other Author(s): Allen, Joseph Henry, 1820-1898. Andrew, John A. (John Albion), 1818-1867. Atkinson, Edward, 1827-1905. Clarke, James Freeman, 1810-1888. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882. Hale, Edward Everett, 1822-1909. Hedge, Frederic Henry, 1805-1890. Little, Arthur D. (Arthur Dehon), 1863-1935. Norton, Charles Eliot, 1827-1908. Parkman, Francis, 1823-1893. L a NEQ 67, #3 (1994) :476-486. Memoranda and Documents EMERSON AND THE EXAMINER CLUB: AN UNPUBLISHED CONVERSATION ALFRED G. LITTON As anyone familiar with the contemporary reception of Emerson's writings is aware, some of the least hospitable reviews of his works appeared in the Christian Examiner in the 1830s and 1840s. Al- though the later editors of that Unitarian-affiliated periodical showed greater deference to the transcendentalist writer, throughout its forty- six year history (1824-69) the Examiner continued to maintain its rep- utation as the voice of mainstream Unitarianism, often championing the cause of denominational unity in the face of increasing factionaliza- tion. In 1863, toward the close of the magazine's long run, one of its editors, Joseph Henry Allen, formed the Examiner Club in an attempt to provide support for the waning periodical. Meeting at Boston's Par- ker House on the first Monday of each month, at its height in the late 1870s the club boasted nearly eighty members. A list of the earliest members of the club includes the names of such notable intellectual and religious figures as William James, Henry James, Sr., William Dean Howells, William Rounseville Alger, John Weiss, Edward Everett Hale, Charles Eliot Norton, Francis Parkman, Jr., and, surprisingly enough, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though Emerson's active involvement with the Examiner Club was quite limited, his decision to join and to attend at least a few of its meet- ings leaves Emersonians pondering a few unanswered questions. Why would Emerson join a club that was, at least initially, dedicated to the support of a periodical he himself admitted "come[s] never into my study"?" Equally as important is the question of why his affiliation with the club ceased. The author wishes to thank Conrad Wright and the staff of the Massachusetts Histor- ical Society for their kind assistance and Joel Myerson of the University of South Carolina for his advice and encouragement. 1Ralph Waldo Emerson to Mary Moody Emerson, 21 September 1841, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk and Eleanor Tilton, 9 vols. (New York: Colum- bia University Press, 1939-94), 2:451. 476 This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 23:51:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms INE 19/28 Emerson and the Examiner Club: An Unpublished Conversation Author(s): Alfred G. Litton Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 476-486 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/366148 Accessed: 28-08-2017 23:51 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/366148?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The New England Quarterly, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The New England Quarterly JSTOR This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 23:51:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 477 Scholars seem largely unaware of Emerson's membership in the Ex- aminer Club, and Emerson himself makes only a few passing refer- ences to the organization in his journals and correspondence. Further- more, virtually nothing is written on the club itself, despite the fact that several of Boston's most prominent thinkers were associated with it and that there is no paucity of documents related to the club's history. Though Edward Everett Hale was only partly successful in recon- structing the early records of the club, beginning with the 5 April 1869 meeting, the minutes of each meeting (including those that Emerson attended), the names and addresses of members, the constitution and bylaws, and even later letters from members reminiscing about the early years of the club were carefully recorded and preserved by Hale. According to those records, Emerson's connection with the club began in the spring of 1869. He was nominated by Edwin Percy Whip- ple on 5 April and elected a member of the club on 26 May of that year, the day after his sixty-sixth birthday. 4 Emerson wrote to James Elliot Cabot that "I mean to try for a little while to be a member of the club," but he only attended three meetings after paying his $5 membership dues early in 1870. 5 Though Emerson did not attend the October or 2None of Emerson's biographers mentions the writer's membership in the Examiner Club. Ralph Rusk (The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson [New York: Scribner's, 1949], pp. 400-401) gives a brief discussion of Emerson's involvement with the Saturday Club and the Adirondack Club and even notes Emerson's membership in the Radical Club (p. 434) and the Union Club (p. 419). Gay Wilson Allen (Waldo Emerson: A Biography [New York: Viking Press, 1981], pp. 526-27) provides only a brief mention of Emerson's activ- ities within the Town and Country Club and, subsequently, the Saturday Club. SFrank Luther Mott (A History of American Periodicals, 4 vols. [Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957], 1:287) is the only scholar who has discussed the club, but he is incorrect in claiming that the club was "formed in 1839 to improve the level of book-reviewing in the magazine." The most complete treatment of Emerson and the Christian Examiner are to be found in Robert Habich's "Emerson's Reluctant Foe: Andrews Norton and the Transcendental Controversy," New England Quarterly 65 (June 1992): 208-37, and in my "Speaking the Truth in Love': A History of the Christian Ex- aminer and Its Relation to New England Transcendentalism" (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1993). 4Examiner Club Records, vol. 3, pp. 1, 14, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Hale attempted to reconstruct the early years of the club because the original first vol- ume of the records was "mislaid." In a scrawled note included in the Records, Gamaliel Bradford tells Hale that Charles A. Cummings "must have had the old book." Hale's reconstruction was performed "with the assistance of the members of the original club," but he succeeded, for the most part, only in ascertaining the dates of meetings and only a few of the topics discussed at those meetings. The second volume of the records begins with the 5 April meeting at which Emerson was officially nominated. 5merson to James Eliot Cabot, 4 February 1870, Letters, 6:101. Emerson notes in his pocket diary that he paid his $5 membership dues at the 6 December 1869 meeting (see Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, ed. William H. Gilman, Alfred R. Ferguson et al., 478 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY November 1869 meetings where the subjects of discussion were the "Stowe-Byron Scandal" and the state of American education, respec- tively, 6 he did attend the December meeting, and after missing the Jan- uary and February 1870 meetings, he actively participated in the dis- cussion at the March meeting. In April of the following year, having failed to attend the previous eight meetings, Emerson was "invited to become an honorary member of the Club, and excused from all assess- ments." He remained an honorary member throughout the following years, but his only other appearance at a club function was in May 1872 on the occasion of Henry James's paper on "the genius and influence of Emerson: As was customary with many literary or intellectual clubs of the pe- riod, meetings began with the reading of a paper, and members of the club participated in a general discussion of the ideas of the paper and other related subjects throughout the remainder of the meeting. While Emerson chose not to participate in the discussion of Edward Atkinson's "Claims of Political Economy" paper at the 6 December 1869 meeting, he did engage in a very lively discussion of Francis Tiffany's paper on "Education as a Process of Organization" at the 7 March 1870 meeting. Emerson's remarks on education, and particu- larly on the education of the poet, are intriguing both because they pro- vide an example of the writer's later thoughts on those subjects and because they allow modern scholars a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on a fascinating and detailed conversation among Emerson and his peers. The following is a transcription of the relevant portion of the minutes of that meeting, which were recorded by the club's secretary, Josiah Quincy, and which are reprinted here by permission of the Massachu- setts Historical Society: 16 vols. [Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982], 16:387; hereafter cited as JMN). 'The "Stowe-Byron Scandal" concerned an Atlantic Monthly article by Harriet Beecher Stowe in which she writes of Lord Byron's views of his estranged wife. Stowe presented Byron's wife as a "stoney British prude" (according to Josiah P. Quincy), which seemed to excuse the famed poet's wantonness; Examiner Club Records, vol. 3, pp. 22, 29 Examiner Club Records, vol. 3, p. 132. Emerson, presumably out of modesty, left with Hedge following the dinner; he chose not to stay to hear James's laudatory paper. Int See, e.g., Mary Sargent's Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club of Chestnut Street, Boston (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1880), which provides transcriptions of some of that club's more memorable meetings, including the May 1867 meeting that featured Emerson's paper on "Religion," an essay that sparked a lively discussion among club members Elizabeth Peabody, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, John Weiss, and others. This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 23:51:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms he Papers of the ographical Society of America VOLUME NINE 1915 CONTENTS OF VOLUME IX PAGE Concerning Book Plates, Theodor W. Koch 3 The Club of Odd Volumes, Percival Merritt 2I Publications 34 Edited by HE PUBLICATION COMMITTEE Book-Collectors as Benefactors of Public Libraries, George AKSEL G.S. JOSEPHSON Watson Cole 47 JAMES C. M. HANSON THEODORE W. KOCH Syllabus 108 George Watson Cole, Bibliographer, W. S. M. III ciety does not hold itself responsible for opinions expressed by contributors of papers 1.00 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS The Club of Odd Volumes BOSTON, 1887-1973 AN ON 19 ADDRESS APRIL, GIVEN TO THE PHILOBIBLON 1973 BY WALTER MUIR WHITEHILL CLUB PRINTED BIRD FOR & BULL THE PRESS PHILOBIBLON CLUB Phi ladelphi 1973 I When Bostonians and Philadelphians visit back and forth they al- ways feel at home because of the similarity of institutions in two cities that were both principal parts of British North America. Sometimes one, sometimes the other had a good idea first. It was ac- quaintance with the American Philosophical Society, acquired while serving in Philadelphia as a delegate to the Continental Congress, that inspired John Adams to found the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston in 1780. Although with learned societies em- bracing all fields of knowledge Philadelphia came first and Boston second, the roles were reversed in regard to American history. The Massachusetts Historical Society, organized in 1790, was the first institution of its kind in the country, while the Historical Society of Pennsylvania was the seventh, having been incorporated only in 1826. Both cities have Athenaeums, housed in brownstone Italian- ate palazzi of the eighteen forties. The Boston Athenaeum, incor- porated in 1807, has since the summer of 1849, been located at 101/2 Beacon Street in a building designed by Edward Clarke Cabot. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, instituted in 1814, moved to its present building in East Washington Square, in the autumn of 1847. From 1946 until last February I was Director and Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum; for the past decade I have also been a member of the board of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. So when my Trustees once asked the Philadelphia board to dine at the Boston Athenaeum, I had a free dinner in my own library in the capacity of "a visiting Philadelphian." Everything averages out, for when a return engage- ment was held in East Washington Square for the Trustees of the Boston Athenaeum I chipped in as one of the hosts. 3 The two cities share a fondness for clubs, as evidenced by this eve- ning's agreeable gathering. Eighteenth century visitors to Boston often noted the social clubs that met in members' houses. The Wednesday Evening Club of 1777 has survived with remarkably little change for 196 years. As originally constituted it had sixteen members, equally divided between clergymen, lawyers, physicians, and merchants. Later a class of "gentlemen at large" was added, eventually to be merged with the merchants to form the present in- clusive fourth class of "Merchants, Manufacturers, and Gentlemen of Literature and Leisure." The present membership is thirty, un- equally divided between the four classes. For many decades the Wednesday Evening Club met for a late evening supper, simply to eat, drink, and talk, with no nonsense about reading papers or listen- ing to speeches. The logistical inconveniences in the present world of a ten o'clock supper finally led the club in 1967 to shift its as- sembly to a seven o'clock dinner. It continues, however, in the purely sociable practice of eating, drinking, and talking. The Thursday Evening Club of 1845 and the Saturday Club of 1857 continue decade after decade. At one time and another there must have been, and may still be, for all I know, a club for every day of the week. In addition to clubs bearing the names of the days of the week, there are others such as the Examiner Club, the Curtis Club of lawyers, the Wardroom Club of naval enthusiasts, and the like. Then come a goodly number without names, without formal organization, unrecorded save in the affectionate memories of their members. One could no more attempt to number Boston dining clubs than to count the stars in the heavens. They spring up spon- taneously out of a love of sociability and conversation. When Boston clubs acquire permanent premises, they try to keep them as much like private houses as possible. The Somerset Club, the oldest one to have a building, derives its name from the fact that on its foundation in 1851, it settled in a granite Federalist house at the corner of Somerset and Beacon Streets. In 1872 it moved to David Sears' singularly handsome granite house at 42 Beacon Street, where it still is after the passage of a century. The Union Club, es- tablished in 1863 to underline Union solidarity and provide a con- genial place for those who found the Somerset Club lacking in war- time fervor, has always occupied two private houses in Park Street overlooking Boston Common. The Tavern Club, founded in 1884, has for the last eighty-six years amused itself in small red-brick 4 Greek Revival houses in Boylston Place, which by the introduction of bull's eye glass, dark-oak paneling, and high-backed settles were transformed into a fin-de-siècle romanticized version of a goliardic tavern. The St. Botolph Club has happily roosted in three successive Back Bay private houses since its foundation in 1880. The same preference for retaining the illusion of the private house is shared by Boston ladies, for the Women's City Club has joined the two magnificent Greek Revival houses at 39 and 40 Beacon Street, while the Chilton Club occupies two brownstone houses on the south side of Commonwealth Avenue at the corner of Dartmouth Street. In spite of necessary and unobtrusive additions and changes, both retain the more pleasing aspects of Beacon Hill and Back Bay dwellings. The Club of Odd Volumes, the Boston organization specially dedi- cated to the sociability of book collectors, was in its origins a dining club without premises. It grew out of a dinner of eighteen book- lovers who first met at the now-vanished Young's Hotel on 29 Jan- uary 1887. Its initial profession of faith was thus stated: "The ob- jects shall be to promote an interest in, and a love for whatever will tend to make literature attractive as given in the form of printed and illustrated volumes, to mutually assist [note the split infinitive] in making researches and collections of first and rare editions, and to promote elegance in the production of Odd Volumes." Although the example of the Grolier Club, organized in New York in 1884, was undoubtedly in mind, the real prototype was almost certainly The Sette of Odd Volumes of London, founded in 1878 by the book- seller Bernard Quaritch and several of his associates. George Clu- low, a former president of the London "Sette" was elected the first honorary member of the Club of Odd Volumes, and his name was carried on its rolls until his death in 1920. Although relations have been intermittent, members of each club have been both formally and informally entertained by members of the other over the years, publications have been exchanged, and friendly messages sent by let- ter or cable on occasions of special celebration. Initially the limit of membership was set at thirty-one, following the example of the Rox- burghe Club, but in 1888 this rigorous number was raised to fifty- one, including both resident and non-resident members. The present limitation is for eighty-seven resident, fifty-one non-resident, and an unstated number, never large, of honorary members. The meetings of the Club of Odd Volumes were initially held at 5 a hotel, at the Boston Art Club, or at the home of some member, which provided the opportunity of inspecting the collection of the host of the evening. Visits to members whose books were in the country early inspired a taste for outings. The first autumn meeting of 1887 was held at the home of Amor F. Hollingsworth in Matta- pan, which was more rural than now. A dozen members took the 6:30 train at the Old Colony depot, and were met at the suburban railway station by a horse-drawn barge which conveyed them to their destination, where hot oysters, salads, three thousand books, and numerous prints and paintings kept them well occupied until 10:30. Notwithstanding the pleasure of this evening, agitation soon de- veloped for securing quarters where the club might meet, hold ex- hibitions, and develop a reference library. Rooms were rented, first at 125 Tremont Street, then at 237 Boylston Street, and finally in 1891 at 5 Somerset Street, at which an exhibition of mezzotint por- traits was held in April 1892. As it appeared that attendance was better with food than without, the Somerset Street rooms were given up in 1893. Thereafter the club settled on a pattern of monthly din- ners, held at Young's Hotel, the Parker House, the Brunswick, or one of the newer hotels-the Victoria, Tuilleries, or Lenox. The University, Algonquin, and Union Clubs were also used. For the next seventeen years the Club of Odd Volumes reverted to its orig- inal peripatetic dining club. In its petition for incorporation, which took place in April 1890, the Club of Odd Volumes stated as one of its purposes "publishing rare prints and books relating to historical and literary matters." The club had already ventured into this field, for in 1889 it had pub- lished 151 copies of a portrait of the colonial governor Sir Francis Bernard, engraved by J. A. J. Wilcox from a painting owned by a descendant in England. Its first book, the catalogue of a collection of prints and drawings by George Cruikshank, formed by the late John B. Gough, was published in 1890, with photogravure repro- ductions of twenty-eight of the drawings. The next two books were not bibliographical. Instead they provided members with "A Dream of Fair Women": two volumes of court memoirs of the reign of Louis XV, translated from the French of Imbert de Saint-Amand, pretentiously printed on Holland paper in editions of one hundred and fifty copies, numbered and signed by the chairman of the Pub- lication Committee. The chief interest that these ponderous triviali- ties retain is from the use of color in the illustrations. The Women 6 of the Court of Louis XV, published in 1892, has an admirable color reproduction (in "Goupilgravure") of a Maurice-Quintin de la Tour pastel of Madame de Pompadour, with, for comparative pur- poses, a Goupil photogravure of the same portrait in bistre. A por- trait of Louis XV from the Bibliothèque Nationale is similarly re- produced twice in photogravure, once in black and then in bistre. The Last Years of Louis XV, which appeared the following year, has similar reproductions by Goupil in Paris of portraits of Madame du Barry and of Marie Antoinette. The repute of these volumes has SO dwindled that my copies were bought from Good- speed's bargain counter for $1.50 and $1.00 respectively! After this excursion into eighteenth century high life, the club turned for good into subjects of greater antiquarian, bibliographi- cal or typographical significance. Five volumes of Early American Poety, published between 1894 and 1897, reproduced a number of little known poems of the seventeenth and eighteenth century that had survived only in very scarce if not unique copies. Nathaniel Morton's New Englands Memoriall was reproduced in facsimile in 1903, while three bibliographical works of reference by the Boston bookseller George Emery Littlefield were published: Early Boston Booksellers 1642-1711 (1900), Early Schools and School Books of New England (1904), and The Early Massachusetts Press 1638- 1711 (1907, 2 volumes). A paper on Geoffrey Chaucer, given be- fore the club in 1900 on the five hundredth anniversary of the poet's death by George Parker Winship, was published in a related format, as were talks on bookplates by Charles Dexter Allen (1901), Tri- umphs of Early Printing by James F. Hunnewell (1901), and Chris- tian Remick an Early Boston Artist by Henry W. Cunningham (1904). These were soundly enough printed by the University Press, Cambridge, on hand-made paper in limited editions, bound in half dark roan with blue paper sides and the seal of the club in gold; although these publications contained useful information and gave pleasure to members, they are not remarkable examples of the graphic arts. The first distinctive product of the club was a 1904 year book, printed by Daniel Berkeley Updike at the Merrymount Press, which since its establishment in 1893 had been elevating the design of Boston printing. Although Mr. Updike did not become a member of the Odd Volumes until 1916, he printed for the club in 1906 Harold Murdock's Historie of the life and death of Sir William 7 Kirkaldie of Grange, Knight which set a new standard of design. This account of a sixteenth-century Scottish soldier was set in Cas- lon type and embellished with decorations cut on wood by M. La- mont Brown. It was one of the handsomest Boston books of its time. Moreover, by establishing the fact that greater stress should be laid upon typographical design and that the form and style of books should be determined by their contents, it soon put an end to pedes- trian solemnity in an easily identified format. In spite of the small- ness of its membership, the Club of Odd Volumes then undertook to make its publications representative of the best trends in typog- raphy and book decoration here and abroad. Three publications of 1909, while modest in size, illustrate this new direction. The Library of Rameses the Great, a paper read by Dr. Charles L. Nichols, although printed at the University Press, was embellished with a copper-engraved title page by Sidney L. Smith, which set the tone of the book. A paper by George Parker Winship on William Caxton was superbly printed in England by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press, Hammersmith, while The private press: a study in idealism was written and printed by C. R. Ashbee at the Essex House Press at Broad Campden, Clouces- tershire. Bruce Rogers, then working at the Riverside Press in Cam- bridge, joined the club in 1910. The following year he provided a new format for the club year book, which has been substantially fol- lowed for sixty years. He also in 1911 printed two exhibition cata- logues, as well as designing Harold Murdock's Notes from a coun- try library. From this point on there were no more "dreams of fair women" or opulent looking volumes in a standard format that advertised their owners as members of the Club of Odd Volumes. The best available printers applied their imagination to clothing papers read before the club, bibliographical studies, or hitherto unpublished texts, in an appropriate dress, without thought of any uniformity of series. Most of the books were short, for the club was small and un- endowed; everything produced had to be paid for by the subscrip- tions of members. The theory of operation was well summarized by Percival Merritt in 1915 when he wrote for the Papers of the Biblio- graphical Society of America (vol. IX, nos. 1-2): "Even a small body of men to whom printing is something more than a transfer- ence of the written word to the printed page can by their example in private publications give some impetus to the elevation of stand- 8 ards of printing in general. The reaction to such example may be experienced even in ordinary mercantile work." Between 1912 and 1936 the Merrymount Press printed nine books for the club. Two of these were bibliographical studies by Worthing- ton C. Ford: The Boston Book Market 1697-1700 (1917) and The Isle of Pines (1920) In designing The Felicities of Sixty by Isaac H. Lionberger in 1922, B. Updike used for the first time in an entire book the Janson type that the Merrymount Press had acquired from the Stempel foundry at Frankfort in 1903. Bruce Rogers de- signed two books for the club: Laurence Sterne's A Political Ro- mance, printed at the Riverside Press in 1914, and Late News of the Excursion and Ravages of the King's Troops on the nineteenth of April, 1775, printed at the Harvard University Press in 1927. After twenty-three years of wandering from place to place, the Club of Odd Volumes in 1910 rented a little one-story building at 50 Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill, where it remained as a tenant for more than a quarter of a century. Originally built as a stable for one of the houses fronting on Chestnut Street that Charles Bulfinch had built for Mrs. James Swan in the first decade of the nineteenth century, this structure made up in charm what it lacked in amplitude. Six years later the club rented the similar adjoining buildings numbered 52 and 54 Mount Vernon Street. Once settled in these quarters, the club fell into a routine of meeting every third Wednesday evening from October through May to hear a paper, and of lunching on Saturdays. Originally the paper was given at 8:30 with supper following, thus giving members an opportunity to dine at home. In February 1918, because of wartime rules of the New England Fuel Administrator, supper was moved to 6:30. There, or at 7:00, it has remained ever since. In 1936 when Beacon Hill real estate prices were at rock bottom, the ornithologist Dr. John Charles Phillips, an ardent Roosevelt hater, concluded that, as "slippery Frank had got our number," he should put on the market his house at 77 Mount Vernon Street, just across the way from the club. This was a spacious five-story brick building of the 1840s to which an earlier owner, Mrs. Henry Whit- man, had added a large music room, designed by R. Clipston Sturgis. Dr. Phillips himself had converted adjoining parlors on the second floor into a handsome library, from designs of Charles K. Cum- mings. The asking price for this spacious house, admirably adapted for club purposes, was a mere $12,000. Henry Hornblower, a mem- 9 ber, advanced the price to assure the transaction. The club took OC- cupancy three days before Christmas in 1936; after thirty-seven years no one has regretted the purchase. Ever since this move the house has constantly been used by members for private entertainments, in addition to the stated club meetings and luncheons. It is pleasant as members move to apartments or to the country to be able now and then to give a dinner in traditional surroundings with a good cook in the kitchen. A great variety of learned and purely sociable groups enjoy 77 Mount Vernon Street in this way. The depression of the 1930s, which helped the club in acquiring its quarters, put a temporary crimp in its publication program. In 1929 the club published Howard Corning's edition of the Journal of John James Audubon during his trip to New Orleans in 1820- 1821. This was the most extensive effort yet undertaken, for it was in two substantial volumes. The following year two more volumes of Audubon's letters, 1826-1840, were published in similar format, designed by William Dana Orcutt and printed at the Plimpton Press. A worse moment to become ambitious could not have been chosen. The books were expensive. They lacked the typographical subtlety of Updike and Rogers. In spite of the interest of their con- tents, they sold slowly. Consequently the club has avoided large undertakings ever since, confining itself to smaller books and to the typographical quality of its notices. The design of notices has reflected the individual taste and energy of the officers. When Percival Merritt became Clerk in 1910 the hand of Bruce Rogers immediately appeared in the notices. For a couple of years the monthly meeting notices were set in a uniform but handsome format, while for special occasions Rogers would let his fancy play. For a Forefather's Day dinner on 21 December 1910 Rogers drew an overloaded Mayflower, flying a pennant "Plimoth or buste." The ship's deck was loaded with highboys and tall clocks; chairs, warming pans, and cradles were lashed to the yards, while steeple-hatted Pilgrims were gravely wheeling barrows of spinning wheels through the baldachino over Plymouth Rock! This and the elegant architectural notices of the May 1911 meeting that com- memorated the centenary of Thackeray's birth were reproduced in Frederic Warde's Bruce Rogers Designer of Books. The use of a French lettre batarde type greatly loved by D. B. Updike for the notice of the November 1911 meeting indicates that Merritt also turned to the Merrymount Press on occasion. 10 A change of officers, possibly combined with the desire for econ- omy, reduced the interest of the notices from 1912 through 1914. When Charles E. Goodspeed became Clerk in 1915 design cheered up. In 1921, under James M. Hunnewell, all the year's notices were in lettre batarde, clearly from the Merrymount Press. Thereafter for two decades the Odd Volumes notices reflected the typograpical imagination of D. B. Updike. After Augustus Peabody Loring be- came Clerk in 1933, Mr. Updike had an even freer hand to pursue his engaging fantasies. As Updike died on 29 December 1941 only twelve days after I became Clerk, I never had the pleasure of working with him on the creation of Odd Volumes notices, but turned to Fred Anthoensen in Portland, Maine, for most of the club printing. For sixteen years, save for four years absence in the Navy, I was Clerk or President. During this period, the Anthoensen Press and the Meriden Gra- vure Company did the majority of the notices, as they still do, al- although from time to time Carl P. Rollins, Rudolph Ruzicka, or other graphic artists contributed some characteristic pieces to the series. The first significant publication after the Audubon fiasco was Rosamond B. Loring's Marbled Papers An Address delivered be- fore the members of the Club of Odd Volumes November 16, 1932, printed by the Riverside Press and illustrated by examples of paste and marbled papers made by Mrs. Loring. As only 149 copies were printed, the Department of Graphic Arts of the Harvard Library in 1942 published 250 copies of an enlarged version, entitled Dec- orated Book Papers. As demand again exceeded supply, the Har- vard University Press in 1952 published a large second edition as a tribute to her memory. Between 1942 and 1953 I instigated, saw through the press, and sold for the club ten small books. Recollections of Daniel Berkeley Updike by Stanley Morison and Rudolph Ruzicka was printed at the Merrymount Press in 1943 by Updike's partner, John Bianchi. A paper on the Elizabethan mariner Robert Baker, read at a 1942 meeting by Boies Penrose, was printed in black letter by the Morrill Press at Fulton, New York. The others, which included papers read by Professors George Lyman Kittredge and John Coolidge, and Dr. Karl Vogel, translations of Horace by two Boston physicians, and verses by M. A. De Wolfe Howe and David McCord, were de- signed and printed by Fred Anthoensen. My successor as Clerk, 11 David Britton Little, gave at the April meeting in 1960 a paper entitled "America's First Centennial Celebration," in which he set forth the great variety of ludicrous and hucksterish events that marred the celebrations at Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1875. This was printed for the club by the Stinehour Press in 1961. A decade later American Heritage reprinted it as a timely warning against the approaching horrors of the Bicentennial. The same press printed in 1969 the Society History of the Club of Odd Vol- umes, 1887-1967 by the present Clerk, Alexander Whiteside Wil- liams, while the Spiral Press in 1963 printed To Russia with Frost by Frederick B. Adams, Jr. Increasing costs cast doubt on the future of publishing books, however admirably designed and printed, in the small editions re- quired by the size of the club. The latest publication, issued in 1970, is a diminutive gem of Dutch typography. The Sixth of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,' concerning a ludicrous encounter in The Hague in the late middle ages between a drunk and an Augustinian canon, was translated into English by the Honorable William Royall Tyler while he was our Ambassador to The Netherlands, 1965-1969. The book was set and printed by hand in Van Krimpen Romanée on Japanese vellum by the Tuinwijkpers, a joint enter- prise of C. van Dijk and S. Hartz. Sem Hartz did two dry-point illustrations, and the little book was bound in vellum. Yet subscrip- tions at ten dollars have not yet exhausted the edition of 200 copies. This experience, with a little enchantment of the highest quality, discourages me about future ventures into club publication. Dur- ing the twentieth century the standard of American printing has SO greatly improved that in book design the old pathfinding function of the small book club is perhaps outmoded, unless we can join forces with other groups like the Philobiblon Club to assure a wider market. At least we can continue to have some typographical fun with the notices of monthly meetings. Although Saturday is no longer a working day in Boston, the luncheons of the Club of Odd Volumes continue to thrive, for many members come to town expressly to attend them. The members are all collectors. They are all congenial. Some are printers and graphic artists. Many are members of the boards or curatorial staffs of a considerable number of libraries and museums throughout New England. Consequently a great amount of institutional business gets done every year very painlessly, and seemingly by accident, at 12 the meetings of the Club of Odd Volumes. The bureaucratic ma- chinery of coordinating committees, formal conferences, and the pedestrian appurtenances of participatory democracy is kept at a minimum in Boston simply because of the cheerful meetings and luncheons of the Club of Odd Volumes. To me that is the best justification for its continued existence. 13 Archives of American Art Journal 31y#3 3 (1991). Boston's St. Botolph Club Home of the Impressionists DORIS A. BIRMINGHAM 1880 "THE ST. BOTOLPH CLUB US ESTABLISHED in the city of The avant-garde movement in question was Im- Boston for the promotion of social intercourse among pressionism, introduced into America in the 1880s and authors and artists, and other gentlemen connected with initially as controversial in Boston as anywhere in the or interested in literature and art.' So begins the consti- country. Through the exhibitions in its small art gallery, tution of one of the most prestigious and long-lived of the St. Botolph distinguished itself from other organiza- 1889, the many clubs established in Boston between 1880 and tions of its kind, and for that matter any exhibition space 1910. From its inception, the St. Botolph was to provide in this country, by becoming briefly, as the Boston Adver- an ambiance where persons interested in the arts could tiser wrote in 1890, "the home of the impressionists." enjoy congenial company and, if they desired, shared Given its unique blend of Brahmin gentility and avant- intellectual and aesthetic experiences. Early in its his- garde daring, the activities of the St. Botolph merit a tory, moreover, the club's gallery showed some of the closer look. This paper will describe the club's early most advanced art available in the United States and history and involvement in the arts and propose some therefore played a significant role in the development of reasons for its support in the late nineteenth century of American art. the most advanced painting in America. From the outset, the St. Botolph's membership roll The club was founded in January 1880 following the read, as one club historian commented, "like an index to circulation of a letter of invitation to some three hundred a history of Massachusetts." Many names on that roll of Boston's most prominent male citizens. Signed by indeed ring with Massachusetts associations, for exam- Henry Cabot Lodge, Francis Parkman, Phillips Brooks, ple, Adams. Amory. Crowninshield, Lowell, and Pea- William Dean Howells and seven others,5 the invitation body. Many founding members, moreover, were proposed a club modeled on the Century Club of New prominent national leaders in arts and letters, politics, York, which would feature a reading room, picture gal- science, and religion. Among these were Charles Eliot lery with monthly exhibitions open to the public, and Norton, Daniel Chester French, H.H. Richardson, Charles rooms for general use. Sustenance for the mind rather W. Elliot, Francis Parkinson, Alexander Agassiz. Henry than the body was to be the club's major attraction: the Cabot Lodge, Phillips Brooks, and Edward Everett Hale. invitation announced that although cigars, liquors, and That a group of such luminaries would contribute to other refreshments would be available, the Club would the cultural life of its native city is natural; but that its have no restaurant, and meetings therefore would be clubhouse on Newbury Street in the late nineteenth preceded by "simple and inexpensive suppers" ordered century would become, as William Gerdts has put it, "the from a local caterer. major center for showing avant-garde art in that city,"3 The invitation elicited an enthusiastic response. Of the is more surprising. Although its original roster included three hundred recipients, 262 became charter members, several men whose more unorthodox political leanings and by May 1880, when the club opened its first rooms led them into the reformist Mugwump movement,4 the at 85 Boylston Street, membership had already risen to St. Botolph was hardly a hotbed of radicalism. The 350. The club's popularity continued to grow; in 1890 Botolphians as a group were "proper Bostonians": well- membership reached a peak of 450, where it remains bred sons of good Protestant families, Harvard-educated, today. respected members of the professional establishment, in The formation of the St. Botolph was not a novel event short, unlikely sponsors of an avant-garde art move- in nineteenth-century Boston. Nearly one hundred clubs ment. were organized in the city between about 1880 and 1910. 26 In the 1880s it was said that "no two Bostonians could expanded, it acquired a club house with a gallery on have an idea in common without forming a club around Boylston Street and in 1873 began holding large public it."6 The conventional explanation for this proliferation exhibitions twice a year, frequently attracting audiences of social organizations is that it was a manifestation of of up to twenty thousand. The high point of the Art the unprecedented wealth and leisure of the Brown Club's exhibition history came in 1879 when, with the Decades. In addition, social historians have pointed out Boston Society of Architects and the Museum of Fine that in the postbellum era, Boston Brahmins (like the Arts, it sponsored a major exhibition of contemporary wealthy and powerful elite of other large American art. This exhibition featured the most prominent mem- cities) were gradually losing political power to the grow- bers of the French Barbizon School and their American ing masses of immigrants then flocking to the country. followers. It also included several younger American Boston, for instance, elected its first Irish mayor, Hugh painters influenced by Impressionism such as William O'Brien, in 1884. Disenfranchised in a sense, these "old" Merritt Chase, James Whistler, and John Twachtman. Americans created groups aimed at supporting their tra- Testimony to the Art Club's stature in the community- ditions and values and at providing something of a buT- and to its prosperity-was provided by its much publi- wark against the harsh realities of the outside world.7 cized move in 1882 to an elegant and costly new While social and political circumstances were favor- clubhouse on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury able for the establishment of yet another gentlemen's Streets, designed by William Ralph Emerson. These more club in Boston, the St. Botolph faced formidable compe- spacious accommodations allowed the club to expand its tition from an older organization with a mission similar membership to eight hundred men, including such na- to its own, namely, the venerable Boston Art Club. tionally known artists as Albert Bierstadt and George Founded in 1855, the Art Club's purpose was, according Inness. to its constitution, "the general advancement of art, Despite the Art Club's stunning success, it did not lack through the exhibition of works of art and the acquisition critics in Boston. Indeed the St. Botolph may have been of books and papers upon art for the purpose of forming conceived quite deliberately as an "improvement" over an art library, lectures upon art subjects, or through other the Art Club. It promised a more substantial commitment means appropriate to the social character of the club." to the arts with its promise of monthly instead of bian- Like the St. Botolph open only to men, the Art Club nual exhibitions and a more serious intellectual ambi- originated as a small association of artists who met in ence with its eschewal of elaborate dining facilities and their studios to draw, paint, and discuss art. As the group other luxuries. The club's founders may have hoped also The St. Botolph clubhouse on Newbury Street, Boston, 1887-1941. Cole and H.H. Richardson were on the Elections Com- mittee; and Edward Cabot, Charles Perkins, Frank Hill Smith, and Frank Millet all served on the Art and Library Committee. In addition to offering artists a congenial environment for displaying their works, the St. Botolph may also have hoped to offer the community some alternatives to the Art Club's exhibitions, which according to some contem- porary observers were becoming rather stale and routine. Reviewing both the Art Club's twenty-second annual exhibition and the St. Botolph's inaugural exhibition in the spring 1880 issue of the American Art Review, G. L. Lathrop (who incidentally was a member of the St. Botolph) showed little charity for the former: The recent Spring Exhibition suffered from the usual thinness and want of forcible purpose which have come to be, in the long run, associated with the Art Club collections. Out of a little more than two hundred contributions in oils, water- color, black-and-white, and sculpture, less than fifty attracted special notice on a first careful examination; and of these some owed their prominence to size or badness. On the other hand, Lathrop judged the St. Botolph's exhibition of New England artists an unequivocal success: The first semi-public exhibition of paintings and statuary at the St. Botolph Club offered, on the other hand, the spectacle of a collection in which ideas, as expressed in design, held a larger share; and, moreover, a collection in which there was STRANGERS ROOM Desmond Fitzgerald (1846-1926), who joined the Club in 1891. Photograph courtesy of the Phillips Academy Archives, Andover. Plan of the first floor of the clubhouse, from an 1887 brochure. to provide a more hospitable setting for artists than that which the Art Club seems to have afforded. Until 1883 the Art Club's executive board was made up solely of lay members, who according to a contemporary writer, ap- pointed the juries for the art exhibitions, set aside more space for New York artists than for those from Boston, and seldom purchased works from the exhibitions. In short, asserted this writer, "The Art Club has succeeded mainly in outward show. It does comparatively little for professionals, and nearly all its members are men of trade who know little about art.' At the St. Botolph many officers were nonartists, but during its first decade at least, the club made sure that artists or men knowledge- able in art were elected to influential positions. Martin Brimmer, the president of the newly formed Museum of Fine Arts, for example, served as the club's vice president for several years; the architect Robert S. Peabody was a member of the first Executive Committee; J. Foxcroft 28 Claude Monet, Grainstack (Snow Effect), 1890-1891. Oil on canvas, 253/4 x 363/8 in. Gift of Misses Aimee and Rosamond Lamb in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Horatio A. Lamb, courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This picture, lent by Horace Lamb, was exhibited at the St. Botolph Club in 1892. hardly a single canvas that was not entitled to consideration ists whom I know who appeared to be worthy of belonging to for some degree of technical merit or of originality. There re- the Club. I urge their election, as well as those recommended sulted a corresponding elevation of the general atmosphere, by other members, as the first persons to be elected. If there is which greatly enhanced the pleasure of the spectators. 10 a good artist in Boston, or one of sure possibilities, the St. Despite the St. Botolph's support for the arts, its mem- Botolph wants him. bership from the beginning included a disproportionately United effort by the artists of Boston under the auspices of small number of visual artists and writers. Only three of this club will make a power and influence of very great value the club's organizers (Frank Hill Smith, J. Foxcroft Cole, and long ago needed. Producers of art have been hitherto at a and Robert Peabody) and about twenty-five of its 262 discount-let them join hands and interests and they may regu- charter members were fine artists or architects; a similar late their own premium.12 12 number were literary men. In the 1890s, when member- In a postscript, Bartlett made one additional plea: "I ship grew to around 450, less than fifty Botolphians came desire also to enter my earnest protest against the elec- from artistic ranks. Several factors contributed to the lack tion of any dealer in art as yet represented in Boston. of artist participation, the most important of which un- When we have an art merchant in its true sense, I shall doubtedly was the rather high annual membership fee favor his election and honor his relations to art." of thirty dollars (as compared to the Art Club's fee of Upon receipt of Bartlett's letter, the chair of the Art twenty dollars). For artists interested in gaining stimula- and Library Committee, Edward Cabot, wrote to the tion from their peers, the smaller Paint and Clay Club Election Committee recommending that the names of would have been a more attractive alternative. Its annual artists (sculptors, painters, and musicians) have prefer- fee was only fifteen dollars, and its membership was ence in the coming election and that it was not desirable limited to artists dedicated primarily to the production of for art dealers to be elected. Bartlett's and Cabot's recom- art. ¹ mendations had little effect; artists continued to remain The small number of artist members was a matter of a minority in the St. Botolph brotherhood. concern from the beginning. In May 1880, the sculptor Another chronic concern for the club was its consis- T.H. Bartlett wrote to the Art and Library Committee of tently poor exhibition sales. In February 1882, Charles the need to recruit more and relatively unestablished Soule wrote to the Executive Committee suggesting that artist members: instead of spending money on "rugs and other perishable We all well understand that it is of vital importance that all items to ornament the club," it spend more money on the art genius of the city should be united in the St. Botolph. I art. Specifically, he suggested that five hundred dollars have signed a recommendation for membership for all the art- be set aside each year and that it be used to purchase the 29 best piece from each of two exhibitions. "The club can easily afford this expenditure," Soule wrote, "and by so doing, it would provide support for the city's artists and at the same time call forth their best efforts." ¹ It seems that Soule's suggestion was not adopted, for the club made only sporadio acquisitions from its own shows through the years. Meanwhile club members were con- tinually urged, through the exhibition announcements and annual reports, to make purchases-apparently to little avail, for the annual reports repeatedly record dis- appointing sales. Whatever its failings in attracting and patronizing local artists, the club did more than its share to enrich the cultural life of Boston, especially through its ambitious schedule of exhibitions each year. Records for the 1880s are incomplete, but existing documents suggest that approximately five exhibitions were mounted annually in that decade; in the 1890s, the club's annual reports list an average of about eight exhibitions a year. Only the Museum of Fine Arts could match the St. Botolph in the number of exhibitions in Boston during this era. Other clubs, such as the Art Club, the Watercolor Club, and the Paint and Clay limited their shows to one or two each year. The club's exhibitions were notable not only for their quantity but also for their variety. In the 1880s, the club displayed Japanese prints, Italian and French paintings, decorative arts, prints, photographs, architectural draw- ings, works by Boston artists, and works by members of Mary Cassatt, At the Opera, 1879. Oil on canvas, 31 1/2 X 251/2 in. the Tile Club of New York. Near the end of the decade it The Hayden Collection, courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. began to show work by American painters experiment- Cassatt's painting was shown at the St. Botolph Club in 1909. ing with contemporary European styles. In 1888, for markable for their daring as well as their diversity. In instance, it sponsored John Singer Sargent's first one- 1894, for example, the season began with a group show man show in America, which reportedly attracted a of eight of Boston's most progressive painters, including crowd of ten thousand. In the two succeeding years it Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson, Philip Hale, and Lilla bestowed the same honor on a pair of emerging Ameri- Cabot Perry, and ended with a display of Whistler's can Impressionists, Willard Metcalf and John Breck. etchings. In 1895, the club showed the work of Claude If the St. Botolph's first decade was a period of gesta- Monet and two of his American followers, Breck and tion and promise, its second was one of growth and Theodore Wendel, as well as more conservative artists innovation. A tireless House Committee saw to its careful Wilton Lockwood and Edward Austin Abbey. It also financial and physical management, while the Art and mounted exhibitions of American watercolors (including Library Committee organized an increasingly ambitious a large selection by Winslow Homer) and Japanese and diverse program of events. In the 1890's the club's prints. annual reports proudly list a wide range of exhibitions, Within the framework of its eclectic exhibition pro- Sunday afternoon concerts, receptions for visiting digni- gram in the 1890s, the St. Botolph developed a staunch taries, and "Smoke Talks." The latter, numbering around allegiance to Impressionism. By 1900 the club had spon- a dozen a year, surveyed politics, science, social issues sored solo exhibitions not only of Claude Monet, but also and, most especially, the arts. A sampling of art-related of virtually every important American Impressionist of topics covered in these lectures gives testimony to the the era, including J. Alden Weir, John Twachtman, breadth of club members' interests: Impressionism (dis- Childe Hassam, Wendel, Breck, Edmund Tarbell, Perry, cussed by Frederick Vinton in 1891); Oriental art; Japan- and Mary Cassatt. Furthermore, the St. Botolph became ese pottery; architectural decoration; the art of photog- a loyal supporter of The Ten, a group composed primarily raphy; the economics of art; and the work of major of Impressionists formed in 1897 to protest the conser- European masters such as Millet, Barye, and Rodin. The vative policies of the powerful Society of American Art- club also expanded its influence in the community by ists. The Ten's first exhibition at the Durand-Ruel establishing a foreign art scholarship in 1891 and by Gallery, New York, in March 1898, immediately traveled playing an unofficial role in passing judgment on public to the St. Botolph Club in Boston, as did nearly every one works of art in the city." of the group's annual shows thereafter. The St. Botolph's exhibitions of the 1890s were re- The most important of the St. Botolph's Impressionist 30 exhibitions were the three devoted to Monet, which took to give Monet an unequivocal endorsement, he revealed place in March 1892, February 1895, and February 1899. a newly acquired taste for the artist's unconventional The 1892 exhibition of twenty-one works, advertised by manner: its organizers as Monet's first one-man show in the It is surprising how the eye accustoms itself to new color United States, actually had been preceded by a somewhat schemes. A few years ago the tone of the "Eaux Tremblantes" larger exhibition at the Union League Club in New York seemed like an affront to the optics, but usage makes it rela- in February 1891. It was nevertheless an important tively tame and even plausible. Whether it is beautiful or not event that excited considerable discussion in the press, is perhaps still an open question to us; but as a tour de force and presumably among Boston's art lovers as well. Club we begin to esteem it more than we should have once thought members loaned all but seven of the twenty-one paint- possible. Monet certainly grows upon the vision; and after ings, while the remainder came primarily from other years of study of his work we see in it more and more of sweet Boston collections. In his introduction to the exhibition reasonableness; whether the painter has much heart is an- catalogue, Desmond Fitzgerald stated that twenty more other question. This can well be left to be the final test of his pictures could easily have been borrowed in Boston if the value to the world.21 gallery had been large enough to display them. The 1895 It is worth noting that while the St. Botolph was exhibition was organized by Monet's dealer Durand- Ruel and supplemented with loans from local collections, vigorously and persistently promoting the "new art" and while that of 1899 was primarily a loan exhibition of critics were gradually beginning to accept it, some club members remained unconvinced. Martin Brimmer, who works that had been shown previously, with additions as the first president of the Museum of Art did so much by Durand-Ruel. to advance the cause of the visual arts in Boston, is said According to the club's annual report of 1892, ten thousand viewers visited the first Monet exhibition. Al- to have been "embarrassed" by Impressionism. And though it generated much public attention and a few Robert Apthorp Boit, writing in his journal several years after the last Monet exhibition at the club, revealed a positive notices in the press, reviews on the whole were quite hostile, as they had been for earlier Impressionist violent distaste for the style: showings in America.18 The critic for the Boston Transcript, Yesterday I saw at [Doll and Richards] some exquisite Corots for example, wrote: and Daubignys and Boudins and others and also some by the modern impressionists, Monet and his followers. What a fright- The claims of Monet and of impressionism are still urged with ful contrast! And yet these frightful pictures with their bad excessive zeal by a considerable body of influential artists and execution, faulty drawing and crude colors straight from the box amateurs, who are determined that Boston people shall agree without mixing it would seem-are the fad of today I cannot with them. Excellent painters have been much harmed by this believe these works will last. Bah! These crudities make me sort of propagandism, which is foreign to art.' sick!23 Reviewers found slightly more merit in the Monet The St. Botolph's support of Impressionism before the exhibition of 1895, mostly it seems because it included a turn of the century constitutes its primary contribution number of Monet's early Barbizon-influenced land- to the history of American art, but at least a footnote scapes. "These early Monets are highly interesting, espe- should be added concerning another unique aspect of the cially No. 3 (Route de Chailly, 1867), which is painted in club's activities in its first three decades, namely, its a style that reminds one a little of Rousseau and Daubi- support of women artists. Aside from commercial galler- gny and Troyon; in other words, the style of the 1830- ies, which occasionally mounted solo displays of group," wrote the Transcript's art critic. By contrast, he women's work, the best exhibition opportunities for pronounced an 1891 canvas from the Poplars series "a women artists lay in large salon-type exhibitions like the trifle too forward in its manner"; Hyde Park (1871) and Art Club's extravaganzas and the Museum of Fine Arts' Fog (1872) "feeble performances"; and two examples annual reviews of contemporary American art. That the from the Haystack series as "very, very bad. So bad that St. Botolph, which took great delight in proclaiming itself they are almost amusing." The same critic, however, an exclusively male domain,24 should be at all receptive admired two 1889 oils featuring the Creuse River gorge. to women artists is further testimony to its penchant for "Everything," he wrote, "is sacrificed to an effect of light, defying convention and its openness to what was best in of color and of force; and Courbet himself never got more contemporary art. strength, brute strength, into a canvas. It is what might In 1889 Sarah Wyman Whitman, the wife of club aptly be called 'stunning.' member Henry Whitman and a close friend of Martin In 1899, the Transcript's response to St. Botolph's Brimmer, was apparently the first woman to have an Monet exhibition was more positive, suggesting that individual show at the club. While Whitman's personal Boston eyes were becoming acclimated to Monet's daz- connections undoubtedly helped to open doors, she cer- zling colors and unfinished surfaces. In a long and re- tainly deserved this honor. Considered by many critics to markably thoughtful review, the writer examined the be one of William Morris Hunt's most talented students, meaning of the term Impressionism, discussed its histor- she was a landscape, portrait, and flower painter and a ical roots and stressed the importance of keeping a mind skilled worker in stained glass. In 1895 she designed a open to new forms of expression. Although not prepared memorial window to Phillips Brooks, rector of Trinity 31 Church, which was installed in the Parish House Li- brary. Whitman's exhibition led the way for other solo or two-artist exhibitions by women during the club's next two decades: Theo Alice Ruggles (1890); Elizabeth Strong (1890); Anna Klumpke (1892); Phoebe Jenks (1894); Mrs. Charles S. Sargent (1895); Lilla Cabot Perry (1897); Cecilia Beaux (1897); Mary Cassatt (1898, 1909); Frances Houston (1905); Elise Cabot (1908); Jane Peter- son (1909). Some of these women, like Whitman, were connected to the club through family or friendship. Mrs. Sargent and Lilla Perry, for example, were married to Botolphians, and Mary Cassatt was a friend of member Gardner Hammond, whose children she was painting in Boston at the time of her first club exhibition. But if nepotism was to some extent responsible for these exhi- bitions, artistic integrity was not necessarily compro- J. Foxcroft Cole (1837-1892), a founding member of the St. Botolph Club, in a likeness by an unknown artist. mised. Among the women exhibited, only Mrs. Sargent and Elise Cabot seem to have been amateurs; the remain- predecessors, who had gone to France to absorb the der were professional women of solid achievement. The magic of Monet's Giverny, they made no pilgrimages exhibitions of Cecilia Beaux and Mary Cassatt are of abroad to gather inspiration from the Cubists' special note, moreover, in that they were among the first Montmartre. And unlike New York's Ash Can School, solo shows for these important artists in their native the Boston school turned its back on the city's gritty country. And while Beaux was beginning to gain accep- streets and ethnic neighborhoods to seek its subjects tance in New York and Philadelphia for her virtuoso instead in the elegant drawing rooms of the Back Bay. brushwork and sensitive characterizations, Mary Cassatt First generation Impressionists, moreover, gave up any had received scant attention or at best mixed reviews pretense of bohemianism, becoming respected teachers from American critics. Boston, by contrast, seems to have at the museum school, sought-after guests at society adored Cassatt. The Transcript, for instance, waxed ec- functions, and solid members of the best clubs. static about the collection of forty-nine pastels, paintings, The St. Botolph also settled into convention. Between and prints on display at the St. Botolph: 1900 and 1915 it only rarely interrupted its relentless succession of Boston school exhibitions to show more It reveals an extraordinary temperament, bold and keen, controversial work. In 1907, for instance, it showed the cool and firm, feminine and subtle, extremely modern in its tendencies and point of view, highly sensitive to form and ac- work of the pictorialist photographer Alvin Langdon tion, but not so much so to color and light. It is work that has Coburn; yet it never showed the eccentric photographs style, modern sense and much originality. of Boston's F. Holland Day, who with Alfred Steiglitz introduced the pictorialist aesthetic to America. In 1909 The spirit of adventure that characterized the St. the St. Botolph gave the relatively obscure New York Botolph's first two decades began to diminish after 1900. Post-Impressionist Jane Peterson her first one-woman Its pioneering support of Impressionism had been a factor show in America but not until 1916 did it show the work in the adoption of Impressionism as a national style by of Maurice Prendergast. The club also belatedly recog- 1900, but as Impressionism was reaching its apotheosis nized members of The Eight with an exhibition in No- nationwide it was already on the wane in Boston. By the vember 1913- several months after that group's status turn of the century, many of Boston's vanguard Im- as America's avant-garde art movement had been com- pressionists had moved to New York; those staying be- pletely undermined by the Armory Show. The Armory hind largely forsook plein-air painting for more academic Show itself came to Boston in spring 1913, but the more pursuits such as portraiture or Vermeer-influenced inte- recently formed Copley Society, not the St. Botolph, was riors. Lilla Cabot Perry's response to Matisse's famous its local sponsor. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Fauve painting The Green Line provides dramatic evidence the club, any more than the rest of Boston, took partic- of their contempt for contemporary developments: ular notice of this landmark event in the history of I went to an exhibition in Paris at which there was a por- modern American art. ² trait of the artist's wife. It was supposed to be a beautiful ex- Much has been written about the decline of Boston as ample of some modern work. Well, all that I can say is that an artistic center after the Civil War. Martin Green, for one cheek was bright grass green, the nose was a pea green, instance, has described Boston literature of this era as and the other cheek was a flaming vermilion Now that "easy, tame and safe," and having no connection with sort of thing is as easy to paint as you can imagine. What is the deeper personal life of the artist or with the problems not easy is to paint good flesh color. 27 of society. Further, he wrote, it showed no spirit of While older Boston artists fumed about modern art, rebellion and no urge to be critical. Writers placed a large younger ones did their best to ignore it. Unlike their premium on companionship and none on challenge. To 32 fit into Boston literary society, one only had to be a good club's efforts to promote Monet and his American fol- fellow.29 Turn-of-the-century Boston painters, too, have lowers. been accused of enjoying a comfortable life and high The St. Botolph's loyalty to Boston may have been stature in the community, and of lacking vitality and a even more important than the efforts of individual mem- connectedness to the contemporary world. Art for them bers in its support of Impressionism. Like the Mugwumps was not a matter of taking risks: it centered on the cult within their number, the Botolphians, however uncon- of the beautiful, not on a searching examination of new ventional they sometimes may have seemed, were indis- aesthetic problems or social and personal realities. "Bos- putably men of Boston. These were the men who after ton painters," wrote Guy Pène du Bois in 1915, "avoid the Civil War stayed home instead going off to the all but the polite truths There is neither a laugh or a burgeoning industrial centers to make their fortune. Like tear in all the Boston painting and, perhaps, not a single the Mugwumps, they "did not regret their choice, but instance of unchecked, unconsidered, uncompromising they did not want Boston to become a New England hill expression." town." And just as the Mugwumps used this period to Given the cultural landscape of late-nineteenth- bring political orthodoxy up to date, the Botolphians, by century Boston, it is not as remarkable that the St. promoting Impressionism, used the period to bring the Botolph ultimately succumbed to a safe conservatism as orthodox taste for French Barbizon painting up to date. it is that the club patronized progressive art in the first Their task was made palatable by the fact that Im- place. In exhibiting the Impressionists and other artists pressionism had been discovered for America principally not widely accepted in America, this patrician organiza- by their fellow Bostonians. Two Bostonians were among tion faced criticism from both inside and outside its ranks. the first American artists believed to have visited What motivated it to temporarily stray down this uncon- Giverny: Willard Metcalf, who had showed at the St. ventional road? Two answers come to mind. The first is Botolph in 1889, and John Breck, who showed and that the membership of the club included several enthu- became a club member in 1890. Theodore Wendel, an- siastic and articulate spokesmen for Impressionism who other early visitor to Giverny, settled in Boston in 1892 strongly influenced the planning for exhibitions. The and frequently exhibited at the club. John Singer Sar- second is that the club's loyalty to Impressionism was gent, although an expatriate, had strong ties to Boston. actually a manifestation of a greater loyalty, namely, a Lilla Cabot Perry, perhaps Monet's closest American loyalty to the city of Boston. friend, was a Brahmin to the core. Finally, America's With respect to the first explanation, the names that greatest exponent of Impressionism, Childe Hassam, was seem particularly germane are J. Foxcroft Cole, Frederick Boston-born. Thus, even if Impressionism offended some Vinton, Desmond Fitzgerald, and Thomas Sargeant Botolphians, it could have partially redeemed itself by Perry. As early as the 1870s Cole had been a polemicist boasting solid Boston connections. In the final analysis, in Boston for French Barbizon painting, the precursor of it is these connections that may best explain why the club Impressionism, and during the latter part of his career that proudly adopted its name from the name of its had experimented with the plein-air approach. Vinton, hometown (Boston is a contraction of the ancient who was a very successful Boston portraitist, lectured Botolph's Town) became the first home of the Im- and wrote on Impressionism and painted sensitive Im- pressionists. pressionist landscapes for his own pleasure. Fitzgerald, a wealthy engineer, was an avid collector of both Im- pressionist paintings and Oriental ceramics. His author- NOTES ship of the St. Botolph's 1892 Monet catalogue and two 1. The St. Botolph Club, still located in Boston's Back Bay, continues later essays on the artist suggests that he was a primary today as one of Boston's preeminent social clubs. Open to women since force behind the Monet exhibitions. Fitzgerald, more- 1990, the club has maintained its mission of promoting the arts and over, was evidently receptive to modern art in general, literature in the city of Boston. I am grateful to Mr. Sherwood Bain, because he later helped to organize the Armory Show in president of the St. Botolph Club, for SO kindly answering my questions Boston. Thomas Sergeant Perry, too, may have lent quiet about the club's current activities and for providing other assistance in completing this paper. support for the showings of Monet and the "Givernyites." 2. "Gleanings from the History of the St. Botolph Club," undated A scholar, writer, and former teacher at Harvard, Perry typescript by Talcott Miner Banks, Jr., St. Botolph Club Papers, Massa- and his wife Lilla Cabot Perry had visited Giverny in chusetts Historical Society (available on microfilm at the Archives of 1889, where they became close to Monet and his family. American Art [hereafter AAA] microfilm roll 2241, frames 12-21) Mrs. Perry, a competent Impressionist painter in her own 3. William Gerdts, American Impressionism (New York: Artabras, 1984), right, is credited with bringing the first Monet painting p. 65. to Boston in 1889 and with encouraging her wealthy 4. The following charter members of the St. Botolph Club were active Boston friends to collect the French painter's works. members or at least sympathizers with the Mugwump movement: C.F. Thomas Perry also attempted to promote the artist in Adams, Jr., Edward Atkinson, Martin Brimmer, William Everett, America by proposing to write articles on Monet for Charles Elliot, and Moorfield Storey. For a full discussion of the Boston Mugwump movement and its leading figures, see Geoffrey T. Blodgett, Scribner's, the Century and the Atlantic. Much to his "The Mind of the Boston Mugwump," Mississippi Valley Historical Review disappointment, these proposals were rejected; surely, 48 (March 1962): 614-34. therefore, he must have enthusiastically endorsed the 5. John Quincy Adams, E.B. Haskell, R.S. Peabody, J. Foxcroft Cole, 33 Frank Hill Smith, John R. Ropes, and A. C. Sowdon. originally established to provide convivial male companionship and, 6. Blodgett, "Boston Mugwump." p. 620. not infrequently perhaps, refuge from domestic responsibility. Talcott Banks, Jr., wrote: "The first officers faced much the same problems as 7. Nathan C. Shiverick, "The Social Reorganization of Boston," in the officers of today: for instance, how to keep the wives away. The Alexander W. Williams, A Social History of the Greater Boston Clubs (Barre, guiding principle here was established in November 1880, with a vote Mass.: Barre Publishers, 1970). pp. 128-143. that ladies should be admitted only on 'special occasions.' That is the 8. Beta, "The Art Clubs of Boston," Art Amateur 11 (October 1884): 100. law; all that has followed is just interpretation" ("Gleanings," St. 9. P. Lathrop, "The Exhibitions," American Art Review 1 (1880): 441. Botolph Club Papers, AAA microfilm roll 2241, frames 14-15). Such During the early years of the club's existence, relatively few Boston art exclusionary tactics, however, might actually promote domestic bliss, lovers were able to partake of the "elevated atmosphere" described by rationalized an anonymous member in a tongue-in-cheek description Lathrop. The club's first constitution provided for art exhibitions "open of the club's patron saint: "Is [St. Botolph the foe of the domestic hearth, to gentlemen not members of the Club and to ladies admitted by tickets teaching the wife of our bosom to hate him? Far from it. He kindles issued by the Art and Library Committee." Members were allowed four our wits, warms our hearts, and gladdens our dull spirits that no tickets for strangers, and the Art and Library Committee could issue Botolphian wife may ever think her husband a bore" (unsigned, only a hundred more to selected individuals. Not until 1889, after the undated handwritten ms., St. Botolph Club Papers, AAA microfilm roll club moved into larger quarters at No. 2 (later No. 4) Newbury Street, 2241, frames 31-36). was access to exhibitions granted to the public, but then only at 25. For a description of Sarah Wyman Whitman's career, see Martha designated days and hours. J. Hoppin, "Women Artists in Boston, 1870-1900: The Pupils of Wil- 10. Ibid., p. 444. liam Morris Hunt," American Art Journal 13 (Winter 1981): 17-46. 11. The Paint and Clay Club, like the St. Botolph, was organized in 26. "Miss Cassatt's Exhibition at the St. Botolph Club," Boston Evening 1880. According to its constitution, it was established "for the produc- Transcript, March 24, 1898, p. 6. tion of works of art, literature, music, and the promotion of social 27. "Boston Artists and Sculptors in Intimate Talks, XII-Lilla Cabot intercourse among its members." It maintained a membership of about Perry." Boston Herald, February 27, 1921, p. 6. fifty members, nearly all active artists. Its annual exhibitions of paint- 28. For Boston's reaction to the Armory Show, see Trevor J. ings, sculptures and works on paper in the 1880s and 1890s were Fairbrother, "Painting in Boston 1870-1930," in The Bostonians (Boston: accompanied by elegantly printed catalogues decorated with vignettes Museum of Fine Arts, 1986), pp. 85-86; and Milton W. Brown, The by artist members. The club ceased its exhibitions around 1901 but Story of the Armory Show (New York: Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, members continued to meet informally for several years thereafter. 1963). pp. 184-191. 12. T. H. Bartlett to Art and Library Committee, May 20, 1880, St. 29 Martin Green, The Problem of Boston: Some Readings in Cultural History Botolph Club Papers, AAA microfilm roll 2241, frames 36-37. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1966). p. 118. 13. Charles Soule to the Executive Committee, February 13, 1882, St. 30. Guy Pène du Bois, "The Boston Group of Painters," Arts and Botolph Club Papers, AAA microfilm roll 2241, frame 72. Decoration 5 (October 1915): 459-60. 14. In his journals Robert Apthorp Boit, a member of the House 31. Virginia Harlow, Thomas Sergeant Perry: A Biography (Durham, N.C.: Committee from 1891 to 1896, describes the rather sorry state of the Duke University Press, 1950), p. 110. club's finances and facilities when he came into office and outlines its efforts to correct the situation. Journals, vol. II, 1891, pp. 109, 125, 267 32. Blodgett. "Boston Mugwump." p. 615. and vol. III, 1896, pp. 279-81, Robert Apthorp Boit Papers, Massachu- setts Historical Society. 15. Williams, Greater Boston Clubs. p. 32. 16. Forty of Monet's canvases were shown at the Union League Club in New York in February 1891; this presumably was the artist's first Regional Reports one-man show in the United States. Although the exhibition was reviewed in the New York Times (February 15, 1891, p. 4), Bostonians were seemingly unaware of it. Desmond Fitzgerald, in his introduction to the catalogue of the large Monet retrospective sponsored by the Copley Society in Boston in 1905 and in a subsequent article in the Outlook (July 22, 1905, pp. 767-775), continued to describe the 1892 St. Botolph exhibition as Monet's first in America. 17. Member lenders were P.C. Brooks, Henry Sayles, Desmond Fitzger- ald, J. Foxcroft Cole, Horace Lamb, and Denman Ross. Other lenders were Annette P. Rogers, W.L. Bradley, S. Dacre Bush, Lawrence Minot, Southeast all of Boston, and John Nicholas Brown of Providence. 18. For an extensive survey of the critical reactions to Monet and the American Impressionists in the early 1890s, especially in Boston, see Laura L. Meixner. An International Episode: Millet, Monet and their North American Counterparts (Memphis: Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 1982), pp. 130-141. 19. "The Fine Arts," Boston Evening Transcript, March 28, 1892, p. 4. 20. "The Exhibition of Claude Monet's Work at the St. Botolph Club," Liza Kirwin Boston Evening Transcript, February 6, 1895, p. 5. 21. "Exhibition of Monet's Landscapes at the St. Botolph Club," Boston "I have been reading your letter over again and it is a Evening Transcript, February 8, 1899, p. 14. mighty interesting document," wrote painter Robert 22. Wayne Andrews, "Martin Brimmer: The First Gentleman of Bos- Henri in 1926 to his former student Morgan Russell ton," Archives of American Art Journal, 1964, 4:1, pp. 4-7. (1886-1953). Russell, who had lived in France for sixteen 23. Journals, vol. VIII, 1905, p. 73, Boit Papers. years, saw himself as an "outsider," who, though well- 24. The St. Botolph today admits women. Like all such clubs, it was respected by the French, lacked the financial means to 34 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Page 1 of 3 Massachusetts Historical Society ABIGAIL Founded 1791 the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Search Titles History Help ABIGAIL Home Database Name: Massachusetts Historical Society Search Request: Keyword Anywhere = Boston clubs Search Results: Displaying 9 of 100009 entries Previous Next Bibliographic Holdings Table of Contents MARC View St. Botolph Club records, Relevance: Format: Mixed Material Electronic resources: Click here to access the guide to this collection. Call number(s): OFFSITE STORAGE Request unavailable Please follow the link to the electronic resource. Requesting may be possible there. Ms. N-2176 (oversize only) Creator: St. Botolph Club (Boston, Mass.). Title: St. Botolph Club records, 1879-1991. Description: 19 cartons (stored offsite) and 1 oversize carton (stored onsite). Arranged in five series: Historical Materials; Administrative Records; Club Activities; Clippings and Scrapbooks; and Sound Recordings. Restrictions: Collection is open to researchers, however St. Botolph Club holds all copyright. Users must sign an agreement regarding copyright before they will be allowed access to the collection. THIS COLLECTION IS STORED OFFSITE. ADVANCE NOTICE IS REQUIRED FOR USE OF THIS COLLECTION. http://balthazaar.masshist.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=9&ti=1,9&Search%5FArg=Bosto... 3/1/2020 THE STORY OF THE SATURDAY MORNING CLUB OF BOSTON Organized by MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE and MICS ROBERT E. APTHORP November Second Eighteen Hundred siszil Scienty-One ON THE OCCASION OF ITS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY 1932 622 DECEMBER 1844 DECEMBER 1844 623 & only went, when they came in crowds with carriages "to conduct him the Dial, by a correspondent, who, I have discovered to be Elliot Cabot, to the boat," & go he must. -Then he got into the coach himself, not in the Law school at Cambridge, son of Saml. Cabot. 137 Do you know thinking it proper to be dragged.- There was an account (of)in the him? He seems to be a master in the abstruse science of psychology. newspapers some months since of a Sheriff Batterman who was sent to When you come to see me in February, you shall know of his works. All serve a writ on the Rensaellaer tenants in N. Y. 133 I remember talking blessings rest on your roof! with Mr Hoar, one day, long before he was appointed to this mission, on R. Waldo E. that account, & I told him I should like to give a vote for that Mr Batterman for President of the U. S. Mr H. fully entered into my respect To JAMES? D BARTLETT, CONCORD, DECEMBER 28? 1844 for the officer, as indeed his own character would lead him to. He has [On the address leaf torn from a letter to him, postmarked from Dover, N.H. on had now a good occasion to breathe his own virtue. Our politics promise December 26 (RWEMA), Emerson has written: "J D Bartlett Dec 1844 answered to give us some gymnastic culture, if we are inclined. I have no literature that I wd. come 12 Feb 1845." See December 6, above, for a correction of Charvat I believe to offer you in return for your good news of Goethe. I read A. James Bartlett is listed as an attorney in an 1843 Dover directory.] lately Alexander Henry's book (ab) of travels in America in 1766 &C which I think the best book about the Indians I have seen. 134 Yet I have To C M KEBEN, CONCORD, DECEMBER 28? 1844 never read Catlin. But I prize every book of facts, I believe, much more [On the address sheet torn from a letter to him from Newmarket, N.H., post- than practical men, so-called, do. Much the best society I have ever marked December 26 (RWEMA), Emerson has written: "C. M. Keben Dec 1844 answered that I wd come February 1845." See December 6, above, for a known is a club in Concord called "the Social Circle," consisting always correction of Charvat.] of twentyfive of our citizens, doctor, lawyer, farmer, trader, miller, me- chanic, &c. solidest men, who yield the solidest gossip. 135 Harvard Uni- 137. See Letters, 4:279-280. versity is a wafer in comparison with the solid land which my friends represent. I do not like to be absent from home on Tuesday evenings in winter. The other night in Boston I went to hear Mr Hudson, 136 who takes captive all the Shakspearians in town. He hailed from Ohio, but turned out, of course, to be a Yankee. He has studied his master in a Clobs very liberal spirit, and is a very ingenious critic on character & passion. It was one of those lectures which are creditable alike to the speaker & the audience, and I was gratified by the strong impression he has evidently Hile made. I have an admirable paper on Spinoza, sent me, months ago, for 133- A dramatic account of Sheriff Christopher Batterman's attempt to serve a writ of eviction on a squatter in Rensaellaersville appeared in the BDA of September 4, 1844. The article, dated September 1 and signed "Watervliet," was reprinted from the New York Journal of Commerce of September 2. It represents the sheriff as determinedly devoted to duty although attacked. tarred, and feathered, and then deserted by faithless deputies whom he treats with merited contempt. The report has the character of romantic fiction; its lone hero is intrepid and everyone else, cowardly. fates, 134. Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territory Between the Years 1760 and 1776 (New York: I. Riley, 1809). Not in Emerson's library, possibly borrowed from the Athenaeum (the records for 1843-1841 are missing). I find no evidence that Emerson ever did read any of George Catlin's works, but he may have seen his paintings. 35 See Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord, ed. by Edward Waldo Emerson. Henry Norman Hudson, whose lectures on Shakespeare were recommended to Emerson by James Freeman Clarke (Letters, 3:267), and who on January 1, 1845, gave his lecture on Macbeth in Concord. Hudson was born in Vermont. 5/19/2020 Thursday Evening Club Records, 1846-1999 Thursday Evening Note: In The Athers Club America by T. H.O Connor, Records he references the start of the Thursday Evening Club at 2 Park Street by John Collins Warren, M.D. 1846-1999 at his home beside the Offsite Storage Inventory Thomas Wien Word residence. Frances C. Gray arrived with abbatt Laurever Restrictions on Access and mastin Brimmer The Thursday Evening Club (Boston, Mass.) records are stored offsite and must be requested at least two business days in advance via Portal1791 (https://aeon.masshist.org/) . Researchers needing more than six items from offsite storage should provide additional advance notice. If you have questions about requesting materials from offsite storage, please contact the reference desk at 617-646-0532 or reference@masshist.org (mailto:reference@masshist.org) Note: This collection is PARTIALLY PROCESSED. COLLECTION SUMMARY CREATOR: Thursday Evening Club (Boston, Mass.) TITLE: Thursday Evening Club records DATES: 1846-1999 PHYSICAL 3 cartons DESCRIPTION: 5/19/2020 Thursday Evening Club Records, 1846-1999 NUMBER: REPOSITORY: Massachusetts Historical Society , 1154 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02215 library@masshist.org mailto:library@masshist.org) ABSTRACT This collection includes the records of the Thursday Evening Club, a men's club founded in Boston in 1846 to promote "social and scientific conversation." First called the "Warren Club" after one of its founders, John C. Warren, the club held bi- weekly Thursday meetings at the home of one of its members to listen to talks on a variety of subjects, at first scientific but later expanded to include literature, history, and other subjects. The records include loose and bound membership lists; announcements, lists, and summaries of meetings; correspondence; presidents' reports; manuscripts of original papers; historical reminiscences; and memorials delivered by members, including Moorfield Storey, James F. Rhodes, and Worthington C. Ford. ACQUISITION INFORMATION Deposited by the Thursday Evening Club, Dec. 1926, with periodic additions. RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS The Thursday Evening Club (Boston, Mass.) records are stored offsite and must be requested at least two business days in advance via Portal1791 (https://aeon.masshist.org/) Researchers needing more than six items from offsite storage should provide additional advance notice. If you have questions about requesting materials from offsite storage, please contact the reference desk at 617- 646-0532 or reference@masshist.org (mailto:reference@masshist.org) Note: This collection is PARTIALLY PROCESSED. SUMMARY DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTION 5/19/2020 Thursday Evening Club Records, 1846-1999 Member lists/records, Carton 1 BARCODE:SH 15EV A 1846-1979 Lists of meetings, 1875- Carton 1 BARCODE:SH 15EV A 1968 Invitations/meeting Carton 1 BARCODE:SH 15EV A announcements, 1859- 1963 Dinner attendance lists, Carton 1 BARCODE:SH 15EV A 1946-1974 Correspondence, 1849- Carton 1 BARCODE:SH 15EV A 1932 Correspondence, 1933- Carton 2 BARCODE:SH 15EW B 1976 Original papers Carton 2 BARCODE:SH 15EW B delivered, 1908-1920 Minutes, agendas, etc., Carton 2 BARCODE:SH 15EW B 1846-1875, 1941-1971 Presidents' Reports, Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C 1947-1963 Treasurers' Reports, Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C 1946-1959 Bills, 1962-1966 Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Historical Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C reminiscences, 1896- 1946 Biographical Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C information/Obituaries, 1864, 1935-1975 5/19/2020 Thursday Evening Club Records, 1846-1999 Miscellaneous, 1861, Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C 1908 Misc. printed materials Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Additions, 1996-1999 Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C II. Bound volumes List of members, n.d. Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Minutes, members, 1856- Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C 58 Lists of members, 1869- Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C 71, 1884-91; meetings, 1864-98 List of meetings, Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C members, 1886-97 List of meetings, Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C members, 1886-98 Members, Dec. 1887 Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Members, 1887-88 Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Members, 1893? Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Meetings, 1895-1913; Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C members, 1901-13 Members, 1908, 1910 Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C Meeting announcements, Carton 3 BARCODE:SH 15EX C members, record of meetings, 1946-1955 (disbound) 9/9/2017 Transcendental Club Wikipedia Transcendental Club From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Transcendental Club was a group of New England intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism. Contents 1 Overview 2 Notes 3 Further reading 4 External links Overview Frederic Henry Hedge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, and George Putnam (1807-1878; the Unitarian minister in Roxbury) met in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 8, 1836, to discuss the formation of a new club; their first official meeting was held eleven days later at Ripley's house in Boston. [1] Other members of the club included Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, [2] Henry David Thoreau, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Convers Francis, Sylvester Judd, and Jones Very. [3] Female members included Sophia Ripley, Margaret Fuller. Elizabeth Peabody, [4] and Ellen Sturgis Hooper. Originally, the group went by the name "Hedge's Club" because it usually met when Hedge was visiting from Bangor, Maine. (1) The name Transcendental Club was given to the group by the public and not by its participants. The name was coined in a January 1837 review of Emerson's essay "Nature" and was intended disparagingly. [5] James Elliot Cabot, a biographer of Emerson, wrote of the group as "the occasional meetings of a changing body of liberal thinkers, agreeing in nothing but their liberality" [6] Hedge wrote: "There was no club in the strict sense only occasional meetings of like- minded men and women". [6] It was sometimes referred to by the nickname "the brotherhood of the "Like-Minded" [6] The club was a meeting-place for these young thinkers and an organizing ground for their idealist frustration with the general state of American culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and in the Unitarian church. Much of their thinking centered on the shortcomings of Unitarianism. [7] Many well-known American journals, including the North American Review and the Christian Frederic Henry Hedge Examiner, refused to accept submissions from the Transcendental Club for publication. [8] In October 1839, members of the Transcendental Club had the idea of establishing their own periodical as a platform for their ideals. [9] Initially, Brownson suggested utilizing his Boston Quarterly Review, though others thought their own magazine [10] [9] was necessary. Hedge, Parker, and Emerson declined the role of editor. Ripley served as the managing editor[11] and Fuller accepted the editor position on October 20,1839, though she was unable to begin work on the publication until the first week of 1840. [10] The first issue of The Dial, with an introduction by Emerson calling it a "Journal in a new spirit", was published in July 1840. [12] The Transcendental Club likely did not have official meetings after September 1840, though they continued to correspond and attend each other's lectures. [13] The Dial continued to be published, though it was never financially stable. In 1843, then business manager Elizabeth Peabody counted only two hundred subscribers and that its income was not covering production costs. It finally ceased publication in April 1844. [14] Emerson's speech/essay "Nature" has been considered a manifesto of Transcendentalist ideas. [7] Notes 1. Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007: 47. ISBN 978-0-8203-2958-1 2. Buell, Lawrence. Emerson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003: 32-33. ISBN 0-674- 01139-2 3. Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 7-8. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8 4. Buell, Lawrence. Emerson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003: 32. ISBN 0-674- 01139-2 5. Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004: 24. ISBN 0-313- 31848-4 6. Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 5. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8 7. Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004: 23. ISBN 0-313- 31848-4 8. Slater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 51. ISBN 0-440-03944-4 and Wana 2007. 128 ISRN.07 o soon 34772 9/9/2017 Transcendental Club Wikipedia 10. Von Mehren, Joan. Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994: 120. ISBN 1-55849-015-9 11. Slater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 61-62. ISBN 0-440-03944-4 12. Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 129. ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2 13. Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007: 165. ISBN 978-0-8203-2958-1 14. Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 130. ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2 Further reading Perry Miller, The Transcendentalists (Harvard University Press, 1966). ISBN 1-56731-215-2, ISBN 0-674-90330-7, ISBN 0-674- 90333-1. External links A brief history (http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/club.html) of the Club from Transcendentalism Web Caroline Sturgis Tappan Papers (http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/000601761/catalog) at Houghton Library, Harvard University - includes correspondence with Emerson, Fuller, etc. Retrieved from"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transcendental_Club&oldid=7929037835 This page was last edited on 29 July 2017, at 13:53. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. THE MONDAY EVENING CLUB Founded in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1869 Monday, June 15, 2015 HOME Never On Sunday: A visit to one of the Club's antecedants ABOUT MEMBERS CONTACT US THE SEAL OF TH RATI READ ABOUT THE Search This Blog ABOUT US The Monday Eveni founded in Pittsfield Massachusetts in 1 currently has 11 ac Membership is by i "The Dinner Party" by Henry Sargent, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the number of ranged up to about Presented to the Club by Ronald Trabulsi on Monday evening, April 27, 2015 years. MORE ABOUT A few years ago, Ann and I were wandering through Boston's Museum of Fine Arts when we noticed a handsome painting of a group of 18 men at what was clearly a nineteenth century dinner table, attended by A history of the Clu two man servants. We jokingly commented that it looked like an historical version of our Monday Evening by Rabbi Harold I. Club. the occasion of the anniversary in 199 Well, be careful about speculation! Some research showed that the painting was of a dinner meeting of updates to 2009). Boston's Wednesday Evening Club. The artist was Henry Sargent, a Boston artist who was born in 1770 The rules of the Cli and died in 1845. The painting was done in 1821. Sargent's paintings are known for giving intimate 1869 remain in for glimpses of Boston's homes in the early 19th century and this painting certainly does. some of them are f loosely. 5/19/2020 THE MONDAY EVENING CLUB: Never On Sunday: A visit to one of the Club's antecedants All this, of course, then led to curiosity about the Wednesday Evening Club of Boston - and that is the biographical inform subject of my talk tonight for it is a fascinating look at our forebears and the similarities with our Club that past members: make for what seemed to me to be a captivating story. (1) Founding meml 1869 (2) Members joinin Fortunately, for us, a committee of Club members was appointed in 1857 to "consider all and sundry (3) Members joinin matters appertaining to the interests of the Club," and much of the following comes from this committee's (4) Members joinin report. (5) Members joinin (6) Members joinin As originally instituted in 1777, the Club consisted of nine members, all bachelors in their twenties. (7) Members joinin (8) Members joinin Three were from each of the professions of Law, Medicine, and Divinity. More historical info found here. The founding members in 1777 were as follows (and I include them because several of the names are familiar). The lawyers were Israel Keith, Thomas Dawes and George Minot. The physicians were Thomas Welsh, Nathaniel Appleton, and William Greenleaf. And the clergy were John Eliot, John Bradford, and William Greenough. John Quincy Adams, Charles Bullfinch, and Oliver Wendell Holmes were later CLUB ROSTER, 2 members. Ethan Berg Thomas Dawes, entering the Club as a lawyer, was of particular interest to me because, of course, of Erik Bruun Henry L. Dawes, a founding member in 1869 of our Club. I was not able to trace the family connection but I strongly suspect it exists. Thomas Dawes (and my house is just off Dawes Avenue in Pittsfield) was a William P. Densmo patriot who fought in the Revolution. His house was plundered by the British when they evacuated Boston in 1776. After the war he lived next door to John Adams and he worked primarily as an architect and Albert E. Easton designed many notable Boston buildings. He also held several state government positions and was a good friend of John Hancock. Richard L. Floyd Martin C. Langevel The first expansion of the Club was about 1800 with the addition of three Merchants. Then in 1830 or so two or three other gentlemen were added whose occupations did not fit any of the categories. They were Laurie Norton Moff called Gentlemen at Large. In 1836 there was another enlargement by adding one to each of the occupational categories, as well as the at-large, for a total of 20 members. It was noted by the Committee Lucy Prashker in 1857 that there had never been a strict adherence to the membership rule SO that by 1857 there were 23 members. Charles F. Sawyer Brad Spear When it first began in 1777 the Club met year round, but with the introduction of the railroads bringing increased travel and the custom of spending the summer in the country, meetings were suspended in July Ellen Spear and August. The meetings were weekly, starting on the third Wednesday in October and continuing until the Wednesday preceding the last Wednesday in May, with approximately thirty meetings a year. Our historic mem The assignment of weeks was alphabetical, but hosts could exchange with each other for more convenient Founding members dates. The custom also was that the host could invite one or two friends. Members joining 1 The Committee also noted that graduation from Harvard College was originally a condition of membership Members joining 1 and that this condition was once considered "as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians." But the Committee's report goes on to note "this condition was originally intended to intimate simply that the Members joining 1 Club should be composed of persons of education and generous culture; and as Harvard College was at the time of founding of the Club the chief, almost the only, source of this culture to the people of this Members joining 1! community, the condition took this form. But this relation between Harvard College and our community no longer exists. Our city has become more metropolitan, the place where a large portion of the talent and Members joining 1! culture of New England concentrates. Through the growth of our city there may be frequent inducements to disregard this membership condition in the future." Members joining 1! Members joining 1! The report goes onto say "If in the ranks of professional distinction and literary culture the sons of Harvard cannot hold their own in this community, it is not desirable that they should hold it in this Club by an exclusive condition. Your Committee therefore thinks this condition should be suffered to sink into oblivion, should, in fact, be considered extinct." So there! (Yale must have felt encouraged.) BLOGS BY OUR r The Committee of 1857 next turned its attention to the question of adding new members since "we can easily name a number of distinguished or agreeable gentlemen (I'm not sure that's an either/or proposition) When I Survey (by whom it would be pleasant to have associated with us." Furthermore the Committee wanted the Club to be Floyd) large enough so there would be fifteen to eighteen at every meeting. But there was no interest in making SO large as to "lose its harmony of spirit and character, and the feeling of intimate acquaintance and strong Rick's Recipes (by personal regard now produced by its limited number." Floyd) Confessing Christ 5/19/2020 THE MONDAY EVENING CLUB: Never On Sunday: A visit to one of the Club's antecedants whom we should be glad to have associated with us, and also to do what is perhaps more necessary - to increase the youthful element in the Club by the election of gentlemen who are, by a score of years or News After Newspa more, the juniors of the present members." Martin C. Langevel So far as meetings went, this diligent Committee carefully specified that "the person at whose house the Club meets shall be expected to be ready to receive at half-past eight o'clock; and the supper, which shall Other Monday Ev be simple and without meats, may be served at any time after half-past nine, and is always to be served by ten o'clock." We've heard of a nun Monday (or other) E Thus ends the report of the 1857 Committee, but further research at the Boston Public Library (and a thank built around the conc you to the librarians there) turned up a report written by the Club's then secretary, Samuel Kirkland presentation and disc Lothrop, about the Club's Centennial Celebration in 1877. Presumably there wa impetus for this, but discovered what it W Lothrop was a noted New England clergyman - a Harvard graduate, thank heavens, pastor for forty-two years of the Brattle Square Church in Back Bay Boston. He was also a member of the Boston School Among the clubs we Committee for thirty years. The Monday Evenir Incidentally, the Brattle Square Church began in 1698 as Congregationalist. It moved into a new building in Newburyport, Mass 1772 designed by our architect friend Thomas Dawes. John Hancock gave one thousand pounds toward shortly after World V its construction. Early parishioners included John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, John Adams, name, the Newburyp and Abigail Adams. (Clearly these instigators of the American Revolution were close acquaintances.) The Wednesday evenings Church became Unitarian in 1805 and dissolved in 1878. June. Newburyport is Fortnightly Club, fou The connectedness among all these people is fascinating and the temptation to keep researching and 1870s, and the Tuesd founded around 1910 digressing goes on and on. indebted to William But, back to the Club's Centennial celebration in 1877. Newburyport Monda for this information.) In thinking about an appropriate commemoration it was found difficult to find a theme because the Club The Monday Evenir "has not aimed at action or influence outside of itself, and has done nothing but give a large amount of Haverhill, Mass. (F pleasure to its members and no small increase of that intellectual improvement which comes from intercourse with intelligent and cultivated minds." The Monday Eve Hartford, Conn. It was noted that members, past and present, included one President of the United States (John Quincy Mark Twain was a m Adams), two Ambassadors to the Court of St. James, one Associate Justice of the Supreme Court are archived at Trinit (Holmes), four other noted court justices, two members of the Senate, and four members of the U.S. House of Representatives - one of whom was speaker, two speakers of the Massachusetts House of The Whiting Club, Massachusetts in 190 Representatives, and three Mayors of Boston. has 35 members fron One of the first questions to be settled was the date for the celebration. The first meeting of the Club had North Shore, and lau been June 21, 1777, according to the diary of John Quincy Adams. However, June 21, 1877, would fall on in 2014 (website exp a Thursday which in the Committee's words would "do violence, so far as the day of the week is The Thirteen, a Sale concerned, to the whole history, usage, and name of the Club. Massachusetts club I early 1900s, which a It also seemed inconvenient to celebrate in June when so many would be away from the City for the one of a number of summer, particularly since Harvard's graduation in 1877 did not fall close to June 21. founded in that era to dispel superstition So, with marvelous practicality it was decided that there probably had been some weeks of preparation having just 13 memb before the first meeting and therefore it would be reasonable to consider May as the real beginning of the the 13th, and SO on. ( Club and have the celebration in that month. Charlie Newhall, his Whiting Club and m Having imaginatively resolved that weighty question, attention turned to the mode of celebration. Whiting and The Thi information on both There was thought of a dinner at the Parker House or some other hotel with a prominent member as speaker to furnish the "intellectual and literary treat of the occasion." That idea was speedily abandoned. The Social Circle in Concord, Mass. (Fou This club, limited to To quote from the report: "A dinner of thirty or thirty-five gentlemen [obviously no women] is of necessity male, and typically il rather stiff and formal, not to say sometimes a very stupid and tiresome affair, affording little liberty or the leading citizens C opportunity for any real free, unconstrained social intercourse, and is therefore entirely incongruous and nearby towns, meets out of harmony with the habits, customs, and usages of this Club at ordinary meeting. It was felt that the homes from October members of this Club, if they found themselves seated at a long table with a magnificently variegated bill of Tuesday evenings. M fare before them would feel, as a Club, so queer and strange and out of place, that they could not possibly biographies of Circle have a good time together." have died, and from are published as the So it was decided that the Centennial meeting would be held at the home of their member Nathaniel Members of the Soci 5/19/2020 THE MONDAY EVENING CLUB: Never On Sunday: A visit to one of the Club's antecedants are devoted to conve Guests were to assemble punctually at eight o'clock. After fifteen minutes for gathering, there would be a than the presentation member to speak from each of the traditional membership categories in the Club. of papers. Half an hour would be given to each with the understanding that "however entertaining, instructive, or eloquent, the person designated to speak may be, he is not to occupy the whole of the half hour, but much The Thursday Even Pittsfield, Mass. - so restrain himself as to leave eight or ten minutes so that others might put in a word if the spirit prompts." and following a form Club's. Some of our After the speeches the guests adjourned to Mr. Thayer's dining room where, our faithful secretary noted, "it some of their membe was soon determined that the ice cream had not melted, not the oysters grown cold, though it was a full should have a joint n hour beyond our usual time for partaking of these refreshments." sometime! And so this Club whose existence had spanned that of the United States, and whose members had significantly participated in the major events from the Revolutionary War, to the writing of the Constitution, The Ariston Club o to the War of 1812, the Abolitionist Movement, through the Civil War celebrated its one-hundred years. Conn. - Founded it active in recent years The celebration was summarized by the secretary thusly: "Everyone who had been present felt it had been members dressed in 1 a goodly gathering, and cherished the conviction that they had been loyal to their ancestry, had done meetings. justice to the memories of the founders and fathers of their association, and had launched the Club upon its second century under auspices whose quickening influences would bear it onward to the close of the century, making it in the future, as in the past, an honorable and useful element in the social life of Boston." We'd be pleased to re other Monday Evenir "evening" clubs, "for And the odd postscript to this talk tonight is that reasonably diligent research has found no further "social circles" or otl reference anywhere to the existence of the Club. use the dinner-paper- format, and to link to Posted at 10:03 PM or blogs. Tags: Henry Sargent, Ronald Trabulsi, Wednesday Evening Club No comments: Blog Archive 2020 (3) Post a Comment 2019 (5) 2018 (2) Enter your comment 2017 (8) 2016 (3) 2015 (4) Comment as: Ronald H. Epp, Sign out July (3) June (1) Never On Su Publish Preview Notify me visit to one Club's ante Links to this post 2014 (10) Create a Link 2013 (7) 2012 (5) 2011 (7) Newer Post Home Older Post 2010 (20) 2009 (34) Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) TAGS Alaska (1) Albany Easton (9) Algonq American Centinel (1) Appalachian Trail (1) / Conan Doyle (1) artifi- automobiles (2) aut aviation (1) beards (1) 5/19/2020 Catalog Record: The Thursday evening club of Boston I HathiTrust Digital Library Home About Collections Help Feedback LOG IN Search words about the items All Fields Search HathiTrust Full-text Catalog Full view only Advanced full-text search Advanced catalog search Search tips The Thursday evening club of Boston, 1846-1946, an historical sketch. 5/19/20: Thomas O'Connor reports(p.112) Cite this Export citation file In The Athers of America that Main Author: Fitz, Reginald, 1885-1953. John Collins, M.D., brought together Language(s): English a group of his friends on 10/27/1846 the at hs home on Park Street for Published: Boston, 1946. Physical Description: 14 p. 20 cm. first meeting of the Theeroday Clab. Was T.W. ward, his Locate a Print Version: Find in a library. present then or later ? What Viewability @ S.6 ward? Force C. gray was present Item Link Original Source Limited (search only) Harvard University View HathiTrust MARC record Similar Items The Authors club; an historical sketch Author Osborne, Duffield, 1858-1917. Published 1913 An historical sketch of the Oneida football club of Boston, 1862-1865 Author Scudder, Winthrop S. (Winthrop Saltonstall) Published 1926 The Boston symphony orchestra, an historical sketch Author Howe, M. A. De Wolfe (Mark Antony De Wolfe), 1864-1960. Published 1914 Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr. OLD MONEY The Mythology of America's Upper Class ALFRED A. KNOPF New York 1988 TES IT CLUBS: Notes I 3/12/02 79, 150 / 32, 4/1 Entry 6 :Central Class. He 1902-39 12.1 file, (4 of 5) Siever de Units From 7.1.18 to June 30,1920 -Telegra 7/2/18 from Albright to Darr at Sonseretclub, poston "Mont Desert Pack bill passed Sevate yesterdes" Copy Stepher T. Mather Darean, CT. 3 pg Handwritten letter of Don m 3.3.19 from Princeton NJ to Mc claim noting Het for next 2-3 days hell be at the university Club, NY. 2pp from Princetin, staps E Mr. Eno Andwritte leter By Don m 5 .12.19 ask to t report "be sent to Engeneers' Club, # 2 Commonweath Ave, best ton instead of Somerset Club." "The upon hire A heart foel, the flower and shrubs in bisom the follows and grass is fresh greeney gream." (concluding 4). Parchase Received 6/2/19 Tar camera / Microscope, 1 belongs is LNP. 13 pp. faller Handent lelit of 12-29-19 to Mr. Commerce - Pq. s! rates on my wy hock for washington I west out to Present ad spect a day [Many can ??]] ad nest with the pack sauthalogist Mr. - Eno who how that evenies. Clubs. Notes 2 Edward W. Forbes- Sarudy llub a way Completed 1920-1956. 1958 X Social Register, Boston 1905. Vit XIX, # 5 (Nov. 1904). N.Y : Social Reporter Boose. ! 1804 M.t llo . Alfed F. 33,7 Mr. Borgine H. worr The Charlengete Sm Tr. 1+18 Lodge Dorr. The Tuder. Misses Dorr '! 4 M. + ll. Ellenta Loddy Dons In " ur Auro B . Dorn - Im TV. Ub . Uvn H'74 Phn 52313B 18 Community Ane Mr. Henry Gustovos Dorr U.M.B. Joseph Dorri No Wards, Sm= Somerset TV = Taveen Howard Maynadier Ub = Union Boat Club. Sixty Years of the Unean Uv- University Boat club. 1913. a copies. Peahoof Essek I ILL 7/5 Use ILL for early years Bub 1/87 (E2) W. Forbes. Saturdy lleb a Cartony Completed. 1920-1956. 1958 V X Soual Register , Boston 1905. ViT XIX, # 5 (Nov. (904). N.Y. : Sound Register Aoore. 1,1904 it M.t Mo. Alfed P. Dors 335 Mr. Benjin H. worr C The Charlengete Sm Tr. it 78 Fee Lodge Dorr. The Tuder. Messes Dorr 11 4 M+u Ellentn Lodge Dons Jr. 11 Mr. Gurr B . Dorr - Im Tv. Ub . Uvn H'74 Phn 523BB 18 Community Ave. Mr. Henry Custovos Dorr U.U.UB. Joseph Dorri No Wards, Sm= = Somerset TV = Taveen Uh = Union Boat Club. Sixty Years of the Unean Howard Maynadier Uv= University Boat Club . 1913. a copies. Peahoof Essek the Use ILL for early years ILL 7/8/c