—There is a club in London, the Albemarle, which admits both men and women as members, and which the wags have therefore nicknamed the Middlesex club. An English gentleman being urged to join this club on the ground that he could take his wife there, plumply refused on that very ground, saying that the chief good in a club consisted in its being a refuge for married men. Whereupon the average woman exclaims, "The brute! What did he marry for if he wanted to be rid of his wife?" A view of the case not unnatural perhaps in a woman, but most unwise. Passing by the not very remote possibility that there are women (as there are men) who in the matrimonial lottery could not be regarded as prizes, there are strong reasons for the exclusion of women, even the most charming, from clubs. For women a man may see at home daily or in society. It is in those places that he expects to find them; there they naturally belong; there they are attractive. But when he sets up a club it is for the very purpose of enjoying man companionship and indulging his mannish tastes. He wishes there to be entirely at his ease, and not to be called on for "little attentions." He wears his hat in the club-house if he likes, and he does not wish to be called upon to take it off unless he likes. In short, he wishes there to be free, for a time, from the restraints which the presence of ladies puts upon the conduct and conversation of men, even of those who neither in act nor in speech pass the bounds of reasonable decorum. Women in clubs are pretty annoyances, fine things very much out of place. Moreover, it is true, although by most women, particularly married women, it will not be believed, that clubs, by their exclusion of women, make the society of the sex more pleasant to the average man, and tend to keep warm the marital love of the average husband. Woman, whether to her credit or not we shall not undertake to decide, can bear the continued companionship of a favored man much better than man can bear that of a woman, no matter how beautiful, how charming, or how much beloved. But even women are happier for the inevitable separation from them of their husbands every day and during a greater part of the day. As to men, unfortunately many of them would begin to weary of a woman, and at last to dislike her, if they were compelled to pass every evening in her company. Here the club steps in (we are not speaking of the mere "club man"), and interposes its conservative influence. Many a man's love is kept fresh by his having his club for a refuge; and many a love which has cooled almost to indifference has been prevented from turning into aversion by the soothing influences of that refuge. For the leisurely classes of men clubs are a benign invention; and women should in their own interests avoid giving them anything of a "middlesex" character.
—While we write a new grand scandal is impending of the Beecher-Tilton kind, which will attract less attention than that did because the parties to it are less widely known. But as the principal person is a late minister of Trinity Church in New York, and now the head, of the far-famed charitable association known as "St. John's Guild," and as the principal witness and complainant is this gentleman's wife, who is the daughter of a late rector of Trinity, and as she has already, before the investigation is begun, shown an inclination to have no connubial reserves with the public, the affair promises to be what the journalists call a rich case. It certainly is a very deplorable one, however it may result to the persons principally interested. It is much to be regretted that the investigation has been announced with such a flourish of trumpets, calling in the wife, who declares herself so much injured, inviting the press, and announcing that the investigation will be held with open doors; and this after a publication almost in minute detail of all the charges brought against the Reverend defendant—at whose own request, by the way, the investigation is set on foot. Investigations like these must needs sometimes take place; but everything should be done to confine a knowledge of them to those who are called upon to take part in them, either as parties, as referees, or as advocates. On the contrary, everything is done to make them as public and as injurious and offensive as possible. In this the press is chiefly culpable. Nothing is gained for justice by such public exhibitions, and much is lost to decency.
Footnotes
[ ][1]Total polls of Boston, 85,243. Four-ninths of these will go into $15,114,389—total expenditure of the year 1875-6—$399 times.
[ ][2]"The Galaxy" for March, 1877.
[ ][3]Mr. Jennings, late editor of the New York "Times," now London correspondent of the "World," in a recent letter describing the opening of Parliament by the Queen in person, on which occasion the House of Lords was filled with peers and peeresses, writes thus with regard to the beauty of the women and the presence and figures of the men:
"On this occasion the ladies overflowed the House. Early as it still was, the floor was covered with them—large blocks of the benches were occupied, and the galleries were crowded. All these ladies were in evening toilets, the peeresses wearing coronets of diamonds—most of them being fairly ablaze with diamonds on head and neck. If the daylight was not very favorable to the shoulders or complexions of some of these noble dames, the gorgeousness of their costumes and the glitter of their precious stones served to divert attention from the defects of nature or the ravages of time.... Not many of these ladies in the House were very pretty, although here and there was a face such as makes one stop short and hold one's breath, and wonder at the divine perfection of nature's handiwork when she is at her best.... As for the old bald-headed gentlemen, some of them very short and stumpy, they looked painfully like a collection of 'senators' in some opera bouffe. One of them in particular, with four ermine bars on his cloak, denoting his high rank, was exactly like the funny-looking dummy Englishman which the French delight to exhibit in their farces. He had very little hair left to boast of, and that little was very red, and his face was round and red also, and he was altogether so comic a little man that one could not look at him without a smile. I could not find out who he was till the royal procession entered, when he suddenly reappeared in great pomp and state, standing on the throne by the side of her Majesty's chair and carrying the 'Cap of Maintenance.' Then I knew that he was the Marquis of Winchester—fourteenth of that ilk—John Paulet by name, and the Premier Marquis of England. So much for appearances."
Mr. Jennings, it should be remembered, is an Englishman; but he lived eight or ten years in New York; and I may be pardoned for saying that he carried away a constant reminder of "American" beauty, and a standard of comparison which would be likely to make him fastidious.