27 MARCH 1897, Page 12

CLUBBABLE MEN.

"WTHEN Dr. Johnson invented the word " clubbable," he had no idea how large a class of qualities he was trying to define. The newspapers tell us that a gentleman has just been writing on the foundation of the Athenwum Club, and suggesting that in the effort to be select the Athenwum has not always succeeded in being clubbable,—that the Bishops, for instance, are not a clubbable body of men, however

flietinguished some of them may have been even in that not altogether spiritual quality. The word " clubbable " has -certainly had very different meanings when pronounced by

• different lips. Dr. Johnson himself, though he may not have been conscious of the exact drift of his own thoughts, probably . considered those men most clubbable who were not only willing to be knocked down by his own formidable literary club, but who even appreciated the honour and glory of being knocked • down by it, as Boswell did. Johnson, no doubt, loved to knock a man down with it, and then (for he was at heart good-natured) to see the man enjoying his own prostration at the hands of that doughty champion who felt it his duty to find him a reason, though he was not bound

to find him an understanding." But if that was the kind of man in whom Dr. Johnson really delighted, as, to him at least, the most genuinely clubbable, there were not many men who, in that sense, could have been found to answer to the ideal of his imagination. There are not many men who are quite disinterested enough to like being made to look very small, even though it be a giant who makes them look small. In our own day men like better to be delicately flattered than to be struck a good sound blow on the head. And one reason, no doubt, why the Athenwum is not regarded as altogether an ideal club, is that it is hardly good form to knock either a Judge or a Bishop down with a literary life-preserver, however tempting an object either of them may be for that operation. At the same time it would not be right to deny that if a man has the art to throw a certain amount of delicacy and finesse into his literary duels, so as not to shock by the downrightness of his blows, it adds greatly to the charm of verbal fencing that there should be a slight flavour of naughtiness in the effect of any verbal en- counter, such as must be felt when a great man is treated with a little pardonable insouciance, or when a great personage him- self condescends to use the foils with an amount of freedom that would not be permitted to any one of lower standing. However unclubbable the Bishops or Judges as a class may be considered, it would be a mistake to suppose that the late Archbishop Magee, or the late Bishop Wilberforce, or the late Lord Chelmsford, or the late Lord Westbury, did not gain a good deal in clubbableness by the dignified positions which lent a piquancy to their wit, especially when that wit was of a kind rather incongruous in a spiritual Peer. While ordinary Bishops may sometimes seem to be kill-joys in a club, a great Bishop who combines worldly address and a touch of causticity, or even of cynicism, with his retorts, is welcomed in a club with a sort of enthusiasm for which any other man of the world may sigh in vain. A spiritual Peer who has some of Dr. Johnson's trenchancy is all the more popular for being a spiritual Peer. Both Bishop Wilberforce and Archbishop Magee knew this, and did not fail to enjoy the extra power which their spiritual dignity gave them to send an arrow straight through the joints of their antagonist's armour.

Exceptional advantages of this kind, however, and indeed exceptional qualities such as great conversational powers give, cannot be and are not the ordinary constituents of chabba- bility. You could not expect a club to be self-supporting at all which aimed as high as this. After all, the club lives by the contributions of average men, and in average men you cannot have more than average qualities. Now, what are the average qualities which make men either specially clubbable or specially unclubbable ? We take it that the average qualities which add to the popularity of a club are first discernment in the perception of lively qualities in others, and next the sort of ease which enables a man to elicit them without constraint or effort. A clubbable man enjoys sipping the flavour of other men's minds, and should have the alertness and sociability needful to draw them out, On the other hand, a man without quick senses, a man with- out available ease of manner, a man who is rather bored than otherwise by hearing all the light talk of the world, and whc cannot even take pleasure in communicating it to others, is definitely unclubbable. If you think with Carlyle that people are "mostly fools," and if you have not even the power of expressing that opinion with point and vivacity, you are not likely to add to the agreeableness of a club. But an average man may easily be full of friendliness even for persons whom he only knows slightly, and he may be apt to re- member what any other member can tell him that is of some special authority or significance, so that that other member feels himself properly appreciated by those who greet him in passing. There are many qualities which interfere with this kind of suitability for a club besides slowness and dullness,—for example, too great seriousness or modesty. If a man thinks too little of the light gossip of society he is not clubbable. If he thinks that his acquaintances must be quite tired of seeing him, and that there is nothing he can say which will really interest them, he is not clubbable, even though his mind may be full of eager and brilliant criticisms. If he is very shortsighted, and not even quick in catching the voices and tones of his acquaintances, he is not clubbable. If he is too "earnest," and always wishes to bring the conversa- tion round to great subjects, he is not clubbable. There are plenty of men who are rendered unclubbable by their highest qualities, and not by their lowest. They may feel a contempt for what is called chatter, and if so they are not clubbable. Or they may think it not worth their while either to make or to listen to casual remarks, in which case they are certainly not clubbable. A club should be a sort of focus of all the super- ficial interests of the day,—not of its serious convictions. There are many men, many of the best possible men, whose minds are full of great anxieties, and are really quite unfitted by those anxieties for skimming the cream off social interests. But even of those who do take the liveliest interest in passing events, and have even a great store of bright and pointed conversation in them, there are many who are not clubbable. The late Mr. Abraham Hayward, for example, of whose usual corner in the club the Athenmum members used to talk as "Abraham's bosom," had a fund of amusing stories in him which it was not easy to exhaust, but he was not by any means an ideally clubbable man. He resented any deficiency in the whist-play of his partners,—so much so that on the one occasion on which he himself was known to have revoked at whist, a hum of awestruck satisfaction went round the club, and it was felt as a white day in the annals of the Athemenm when even Hayward had revoked. And besides this, Mr. Hayward told his admirable stories with an air of social authority, and even importance, that took away from their ease and grace. What the society of a club craves is lightness in the manner, as well as point in the matter, of a story. The wit of the late Professor Henry Smith, for in- stance, was, we think, far more appreciated than even the vast resources of Mr. Hayward as a raconteur. It was Pro- fessor Henry Smith who said that an editor of the paper called Nature, who was accustomed to lay down the law rather autocratically on the purpose and methods of Nature's laws, had evidently some confusion in his mind between the author and the editor of Nature,—a kind of witticism of which Mr. Hayward would have been quite incapable ; and yet that is the kind of wit which, when it drops out simply and without any sort of parade, a club appreciates very highly, perhaps even at a higher value than wit of even the very finest kind quite deserves. A truly clubbable irony should always be spontaneous and unaccompanied by any undue emphasis or ostentation. It should be the product of the natural sharpening of mind by mind,—not drawn out of the fixed capital of a long memory and wide reading. In fact.

the best club conversation is the foam of keen minds acting and reacting on each other. And minds which do not enjoy this light kind of friction, but naturally gravitate towards elaborate reflections, are not in any true sense clubbable. Such minds do not seek, but rather shun, the sort of collisions which brighten, though they do not otherwise improve, the general calibre of the intellects which produce them.