The Rise of Clubland

The inexorable lure of exclusivity

Reform Club. Upper level of the saloon. From London Interiors (1841) (public domain - Wikipedia)

“I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” — Groucho Marx, 1950

“I wonder if you’d join me for dinner at my club.”

This question, posed to me in an accent somewhere between British and East coast patrician, circa 1995 while I was a graduate student at Boston University, was to be my introduction to clubland.

At the time, I was almost completely ignorant of clubs (sometimes called gentlemen’s clubs—no, not that kind—or social dining clubs, or their suburban counterparts, country clubs). Growing up in rural Connecticut, I had golfed at country clubs, but hadn’t experienced dining at these exclusive locales.

My vague familiarity was mostly due to the Sherlock Holmes stories. In “The Greek Interpreter,” we learn that Sherlock Holmes has an older brother, Mycroft, who reliably went from his lodgings in Pall Mall, worked in Whitehall, and went to the Diogenes Club every…