High life
Trojan horses
Taki
English gentlemen's clubs, already in their death throes, are suffering the ultimate Indignity. In order to ensure their survival they are electing as members foreigners in general and Americans in particular. Needless to say, this heresy has not stopped the rot. On the contrary, the cure is killing the Patient faster than the disease. What club authorities did not take into account when the practice first began was the extreme snobbery afflicting all foreigners, especially When in England. This foreign poise, in the meantime, has Managed to debauch the infinite subtlety Which makes an English gentleman and replace it with its American counterpart: an Upraised nose, a locked jaw and an overPowering smell of deodorant. Although the decline of gentlemen's clubs is recent, the first signs can be traced to the period after the war. That is when well-meaning but misguided members — most of whom were suffering from shellshock — bandied things like 'comrades in arms' around. Some comrades were admitted and that is when the trouble really started.
When Labour's tax structure made sure the only asset English gentlemen were allowed to keep was their dignity, clubs opened their doors to more and more foreigners. And, appropriately, the foreign devils reverted to type. Now the place resembles Park Avenue, or Piraeus, with grotesque American women screaming for their husbands to come out and help with the shopping bags, or fat Greek businessmen lamenting tanker rates while loudly sipping Turkish coffee with upraised diamond pinkies. To make things worse, the so-called American disease has spread, like a cancer, to the English countryside. More and more wives are demanding their husbands come home after work or else. In fact, the else has happened. Some clubs have not only opened their doors to the fairer sex, they even allow it to spend the night.
Given the above facts, some pessimists believe that clubs might even be sued for discrimination by feminists. And they point out that appeasement usually leads to worse excesses. The main trouble, however, remains the constant striving for upward mobility by the foreigners. As everyone knows social climbers are ruthless and never relaxed. Their sensory devices are on constant alert thus not conducive to club atmosphere. And the English don't help.
Throwing around the kind of adjectives they used to, they insult the newly discovered dignity of the foreign element, which now gives as good as it gets by calling the English lap outs' and beggars.
As the first ingredient of an English gentleman is lack of respectability, the fore igners' observance of superficial rules and puritanical viewpoints adds to the already tense climate. As the secretary of a St James's club said to me: 'Our foreign mem bers try to emulate our local ones by being stiff and formal. They become very boring instead.' The classic case of being more English than the English and boring everyone in sight is that of a Greek brother act. Having had the misfortune of a very common father —even by Greek standards — the brothers decided to become gentlemen once rich. Leaving America which was already full of social climbers — thus very competitive —they settled in England. After studying the mannerisms of what they thought were gents they applied to a club.
To their surprise they were elected as no one knew them. But soon they were dubbed Arsenic and Old Lace and shunned by everyone, including Arsenic's English wife. The reason? Very simple. The brothers
acted like Hollywood's version of a gentleman. One was rude, the other silent. In fact, throughout their stay in England not a•
sound came from the silent one except for the occasional cough. But there was a happy ending. They used their club as a stepping stone and finally got into an American one. Which brings us to another indignity. Foreigners are using their English clubs as Trojan Horses. As they are accepted here automatically, they use the reciprocal agreements between English and foreign clubs to crash places in which they are unwanted. One very old Danish queen has infiltrated Paris's Jockey Club in this man ner. It is the Americans, though, who abuse the club system the most by giving it such importance. As an example I will mention a personal experience. A friend of mine called Michael Thomas recently joined White's. Thomas is a very amusing if some what vulgar American. Upon election he rang my brother in New York and asked him if he would pick up a White's club tie when next in London. My brother, who is not a member, replied that he would do so with pleasure but that he didn't think White's had club ties. 'Yes, I know,' answered Thomas and hung up.
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