More Than Just Another London Club
by Michael Wheeler
Yale University Press, 2020.
About twenty years ago had the pleasure of stepping inside the Athenaeum to attend a book launch. I remember being awed by the towering bookcases of historic volumes and wishing I could become a member, though knowing I was not senior enough.
I had read the previous history of the Athenaeum, by Frank Cowell, published in 1975. I enjoyed his recounting the story of the keen new member who, on seeing an elderly member struggling with his coat, rushed forward and got the coat firmly set on the man’s shoulders. The gentleman thanked him graciously, then added, ‘I was actually trying to get the thing off’!
Forty-five years on, Michael Wheeler has brought the history of the club up to date. Much has changed, not least the inclusion of women members from 2002. The essence of the club is unchanged. Some things are on the cusp of changing:
“In 2003 the committee elected Sir John Tavener as a ‘super-eminent’ Rule II member. He ‘preferred not to wear a tie’, however, and when his request to substitute a cravat was turned down he did not take up his membership. Five years later a survey of members revealed that 64.3 per cent were not in favour of a change to the dress code […] in February 2019 […] the majority for there being no further change in the dress code was much smaller […] the result being 783:715. The strength of feeling on the subject that was subsequently expressed at the 2019 AGM indicated that the question would remain in the club’s pending tray. Meanwhile the vexed question of the dress code for women continued to be quietly avoided.” (Page 306).
I love some of the high feelings of earlier days, such as the letter from John Betjeman in 1967, resigning his membership because he did not like the look of the new entrance hall lights:
“Dear Mr Secretary,
Your letter to me of last year following my protest about the ugly new lighting in the entrance hall and the trivial wallpapering of the Great Room on the first floor put me in a dichotomy. You will remember that you said that the lighting couldn’t be altered as it has just been put in and that my letter would be ‘borne in mind’. Alas, that phrase – a Committee-like civil servant’s – means nothing will be done and my letter is now in the waste-paper basket. I have had to weigh up in my mind my regard for the splendid club servants and my many friends among the members against the deep disquiet at the affront to Decimus Burton and T.E. Collcutt which the present lighting and decoration are. I fear I must resign. […] The Athenaeum is indeed a club for intellectuals, but not for aesthetes like
Yours faithfully, John Betjeman.” (Page 278).
Three years later however, Betjeman was missing the club and successfully applied for readmission.
The club has had to change as the nature of working lives have changed:
“In Croker’s day, most members lived and / or worked near the clubhouse and could drop in frequently, in order to read the papers, pick up the latest gossip and perhaps have lunch or dinner in the coffee room. Today’s programme of talks, concerts, films, discussion groups, dining groups and wine tastings, which is designed to attract increasingly busy working members to the clubhouse,” (page 306).
This change to a style of having lots of events bringing in members and their guests results in a tension with those who value a quiet retreat:
“The author recalls a young family friend […] giggling over coffee when she noticed a member taking a nap on a nearby chaise longue designed by Burton. She was amused by somebody ‘sleeping in public’, when in fact he was sleeping in private, in his own clubhouse.” (Page 312).
Adrian Vincent, April 2021.