Letters from England/Clubs

by Karel Čapek

Clubs

 

HOW am I to put it modestly? Yes, I have obtained the undeserved honour of being introduced into some of the most exclusive London clubs, a thing that does not happen to every wayfarer, and I will endeavour to describe what it is like there. There is one, the name of which I have forgotten, and I do not even know in which street it is situated. But they led me through a mediæval passage, then to the left and to the right, and again in yet another direction, till we reached a house with completely blank windows, and then inside, where it resembled a shed, and from there into a cellar, and there was the club; there were boxers and authors and pretty girls, oak tables and a clay floor, a mere handful of a place, a fantastic and terrible den; I thought that they would kill me there, but they gave me food on earthenware plates, and were nice and kind; then I was led off by a South African running and jumping champion, and I still remember a pretty girl who learnt Czech from me.

The second club is famous, ancient, and tremendously venerable; it used to be frequented by Herbert Spencer and Dickens and many others, all of whom the head waiter, major-domo or porter (or whoever he was) there mentioned to me; perhaps he had read all of them, for he seemed to be very refined and dignified, as keepers of records are wont to be. He led me through the whole of this historical place; showed me the library, the reading-room, the old engravings, the heated lavatories, bathrooms, the historical arm-chairs, the rooms where gentlemen smoke, other rooms where they write and smoke, and others where they smoke and read; on all sides was wafted the smell of tradition and old leather chairs. My word, if we had such old leather chairs we should also have a tradition; just imagine the historical continuity which would come into existence if F. Goetz were to occupy the chair in which Zákrejs used to sit, Šrámek that of Šmilovsky, and Professor Rádl, let us say, that of the late lamented Hattala.^[1] Our tradition is not based upon such old, and especially such comfortable arm-chairs. As it has nowhere to sit, it hangs in the air. I thought of that when I was taking my ease in one of those historical arm-chairs; I had a somewhat historical feeling, but was otherwise quite cosy, and I took a peep at the historical personalities, who were partly hanging on the walls, partly sitting in the club chairs and reading Punch or Who’s Who. Nobody spoke, and this produced a truly dignified effect; we in our country ought to have such places where silence is preserved. An old gentleman shuffled along on two sticks across the room, and nobody maliciously told him that he was looking first-rate. Another buried himself in a newspaper (I could not see his face) without feeling a passionate need to talk to somebody else about politics. A man from the Continent gives himself an air of importance by talking; an Englishman by holding his tongue. It seemed to me that all who were there were Members of the Royal Academy, the illustrious dead, or ex-Ministers, for none of them spoke; nobody looked at me when I went in, and nobody when I came out. I wanted to be as they were, but I did not know what to do with my eyes; when I do not speak I look about me, and when I do not look about me I think of queer comic things, and so what happened was that I burst out laughing. Nobody looked at me; it was overwhelming. I realized that they were performing a sort of ritual, which involved the smoking of pipes, the perusal of Who’s Who, and silence. This silence is not the silence of a man in solitude, nor the silence of a Pythagorean philosopher, nor silence in the presence of God, nor the silence of death, nor a mute brooding, it is a special silence, a society silence, a refined silence, the silence of a gentleman among gentlemen.

I went into other clubs as well; there are many hundreds of them, various in breed and purpose, but the best ones are all in Piccadilly or thereabouts, and they have old leather arm-chairs, the ritual of silence, flawless waiters, and the ban on women; as you see, these are great advantages. Besides this, they are built in the classical style, and of stone, which is black with smoke and white with rain; the interior contains a kitchen, huge rooms, stillness, tradition, hot and cold water, a number of portraits and billiard tables, and many other noteworthy things. There are also political clubs, and women’s clubs and night-clubs, but these I did not visit.

This would be a suitable place to meditate on social life, manly monasticism, good cooking, old portraits, the English character and several other cognate questions, but as I am a wayfaring man I must move on to more and more new discoveries.

1. As English equivalents for these three pairs of names may be suggested Edward Shanks and Professor Dowden; D. H. Lawrence and Silas Hocking; Lascelles Abercrombie and Professor Skeat.