The Book of Philadelphia
By Robert Shackleton
©1918
The Penn Publishing Company
Philadelphia
Chapter XIII
THE PLACE OF CLUBS
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HERE are clubs
and clubs. That is to say, there are
Philadelphia clubs and there are others; the Philadelphia clubs being notable
not only in their combination of age and traditions, with continuance of
present-day importance, but in their profound influence upon the basic
character of the city. The clubs of Philadelphia were a vital force in giving
the city, long ago, its distinguishing qualities, and they still hold the city
to the possession of those qualities. The characteristic clubs of Philadelphia,
strong and long established, gray with age, are fortresses which hold in
exclusiveness the exclusive people who unitedly make up what is really
Philadelphia.
It
is not a matter of how much the old clubs total in membership. The importance
is in their undisputed holding of authority; an authority never spokenly
claimed but always unspokenly conceded. It lies in the unbroken continuance of
social rule, in the stepping into line of sons and grandsons to fill
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gaps made by
death. The old clubs are the bulwark of the social organization which makes
Philadelphia so enduring an aristocracy.
And, too, the
standards and characteristics of the older clubs have had profound influence
upon the newer clubs. As new clubs arise and begin to develop, it is noticeable
that they seem shortly to have become unconscious copies; they age rapidly;
they look old though in years they may be young. Like the boys and girls of
Maarken, who go about in clothes which exactly follow the ancient type of
costume of their elders, the men's and women's clubs of the Philadelphia of
to-day and yesterday seem like those of an ancient Philadelphia time.
At
the corner of Thirteenth and Locust streets, in the short block which separates
the Historical Society and the Philadelphia Club, is something that seems, in a
sense, to stand for both the society and the club; for it is a thing of
history, with roots down into the past, and it is at the same time a living
thing of to-day. It is a cypress tree, here in the heart of this close-built,
close-paved central portion of the city. By some impossibility it has fixed and
fastened itself, rooted itself, in a tiny narrowness between curb and sidewalk.
It would not be surprising in a park or woodland, although it is not,
hereabouts, a common tree even in parks or woodland. But that it survives, here
in this impracticable place, is very surprising indeed. Old men who have known
it for years, love to watch its springtime bourgeoning, its setting forth of
the first vague filminess of green;
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year by year
they note its growth to a deeper and thicker fernlike luster, year by year they
note the turning of the leaves to the dull orange brown that presages their
falling.
The old
Philadelphia Club stands in popular fancy as the dean and leader of all the
cities clubs, for, although by no means the oldest, its central location, the
dignified old building which is its home, the strength of its membership, past
and present, in character and influence, its reserve, its quiet pride, its
exclusiveness, unite to give it distinction. In its ordered charm, and its perfect
peace, it shows what a club, in this city, can be.
It is housed
in a long, broad, old building of dulled brick, at the corner of Walnut and
Thirteenth streets, a building of three stories and a dormered attic in height,
and a high basement, making full five stories in the gable, where, high up,
there is a charming little balcony, bearing a flagstaff which rises above the
peak. The building stands flush with the sidewalk, and its entrance is a
dignified door at the very corner of the building; a building so wide as to be
fronted with a row of six generous windows besides this door, and in the second
story seven windows. This is the house which was built to be the Philadelphia
home of that Southern Senator, Butler, whose grandson married Fanny Kemble, but
in size and importance it has all the appearance of a club house.
Even
more interesting than the outside is the interior, with its far-stretching
length of halls, its fireplaces and cornicing, with everywhere the atmos-
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phere of
mellowness and serenity; and in the dinning-room is the mighty mahogany table
of some twenty-five feet in length, with old-time silver urns at either end and
a table-service of old-time imported Canton for dinners.
In the old
days, and indeed in modern days up to the sudden change in public feeling that
has so recently come, wines used to be an important feature of a good club's
outfit; and it is more than tradition that this club was no exception.
Philadelphia loves to tell, too, that three members of this club were dining,
one evening, at the home of one of them, and, they being very old and close
friends indeed, and feeling even more intimate than usual, the subject arose of
what rare old wines really cost, taking into consideration not only the
original price but the interest as well; whereas all three took out pencils and
laboriously figured, and suddenly the host, with a startled look, exclaimed:
"I bought this lot of wine over forty years ago and I've just found out
what it has cost me with compound interest! And I'll have the rest of it up
to-night so we can drink it and stop the confounded interest!"
It
was this club at which a visitor, passing through the city, applied in vain for
the address of one of its members whom it was important that he should see.
"Write a letter and address it to him in care of the club," he was
told. But, he explained, he had to leave the city within a few hours. Finally,
after argument galore, the desired information was reluctantly given. The
member was dead! And
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even that, so
reluctantly vouchsafed, might be objected to on the ground of indefiniteness of
reply after all.
The
Philosophical Society is perhaps not literally a club, but at least it has more
than its share of the exclusiveness of an old Philadelphia club, and is at
least essentially a club, with its own little old-fashioned building adjoining
the State House, containing, wealth of material regarding early American
history. In one of its rooms Washington sat for his portrait to Charles Willson
Peale, and also, on account of his liking for Peale, permitted his son
Rembrandt, a lad of eighteen, frightened and fluttered by the honor, to make a
drawing of him: the only portrait which Rembrandt Peale made of him from life,
although he afterwards painted a large number from this original drawing, aided
by memory of the great man's appearance, and the study of Houdon's statue.
The
mantelpiece in front of which Washington sat, and which was pictured by both
the Peales, was years ago unphilosophically torn out and thrust as rubbish into
the cellar.
The
Philosophical Society was organized by Benjamin Franklin, more than a century
and a half ago, and there are members to-day who are able to boast, proudly,
that some ancestor or even ancestors were members in the long ago; just as
stockholders of the Philadelphia Library hold with pride the original stock
certificates issued to ancestors of the 1700's. And that, here, is typical; and
it stands for the survival of brotherly love.
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Benjamin
Franklin was the first president of this still continuing society, and that
other statesman-scientist, Thomas Jefferson, was its third president.
One of the
members was the white-robed Brother Jabetz, of that fascinating and altogether
un-American community of Ephrata, whose ancient monastic buildings, with their
rooms of more than prison-like narrowness, still remain, out near Lancaster.
Jabetz, devoted scientist that he was, used to walk into Philadelphia to attend
the meetings, a walk of eighty miles in each direction. And such was his love
for the new Republic as well as for science, that he translated the Declaration
of Independence into seven languages; something of which probably no other
American of that time was capable. Another connection of the Declaration with
the Philosophical Society, besides those of Jefferson and Jabetz, was that, not
long before the Revolution, a platform was erected by the society, beside the
State House, from which the Transit of Venus was to be observed, and that it
was from this platform that the Declaration was first read to the people of
Philadelphia.
Among
the most delightful of the city's clubs, and possessing even more than a usual
degree of exclusiveness, is the Wistar Party. To belong to this very limited club,
membership in the Philosophical Society is prerequisite, and even that is by no
means a certain open sesame, a
unanimous vote of the Wistar members being required. And it is a club such as
could come to existence in no other city than this.
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Doctor Caspar
Wistar was one of the descendants of a Wistars who was one of the early
settlers of Pennsylvania. There were, indeed, two Wistars, brothers, and in
course of time the descendants of one spelled their name "Wister"
while the others continued it as "Wistar" or it may be doubtful which
was actually the original spelling: but at any rate, by some freak, some
whimsy, there came to be a social cleavage, and those of the Wistars with an
"a," were gradually given, in general estimation, a higher social
standing than the Wisters of the "e." And this long-ago distinction
has continued so strongly in force, even up to present times, that you will
find many prejudiced and precise people, if they chance to speak of Owen Wister
the distinguished author, consider, as much more important than his
"Virginian," the fact of whether his wife, also a descendant of the
early Wistars, is of the present-day "e's" or "a's."
Doctor
Caspar Wistar was a surgeon of high professional standing, and at the same time
a man of highest social standing. He was also a man of most hospitable ways,
and he gathered at his house, one evening in each week, numbers of his closest
friends, with the understanding that any distinguished visitor from out of town
was also to be brought by any of them. It was a gathering for men only, and the
club still holds to that old-time rule. Wistar died in 1818, but so important
had the parties become, as social features, that it was decided to continue
them, and the club was formally organized, to meet in turn
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at the homes
of the members. And evenings with the Wistar Party are among the most
delightful experiences that this city can offer. The form of invitation, for
visitors, is still the form of long ago: a card, headed "Wistar
Party," bearing a little vignette of Doctor Wistar.
And the doctor
is remembered in one of the most charming of all possible ways, for there is
named after him a vine which clambers up the front of myriads of houses in this
and other cities, and other countries, one of the most beautiful of all
flowering vines, delicately tossing to the breeze the, pale purple of its
plumes; for the French botanist Michaux, who visited America and met Wistar,
and loved him, named in his honor the Wistaria.
The old Wistar
House still stands, carefully tableted and preserved, and is one of the most
interesting of early Philadelphia homes. It is at the southwest corner of
Locust and Fourth streets, in the heart of the ancient city, and is of the
familiar double-hued time-dulled red brick with black headers; but the brick is
laid in an unusual bond, which shows not only lines horizontally straight, but
also lines of diagonals.
Here in
Philadelphia, even the University Club, a modern institution as in other
cities, has already acquired all the aspect of the old; for it is housed in an old residence on Walnut Street, a little
west of Broad, and has already acquired a full share of the calm serenity, the
assured decorousness, which usually come only with
age.
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Even the
modern Art Club, in its costly modern building, is beginning to be touched with
an aspect as of age, in a certain steadiness, a typical quiet, to be attained
in full degree, in America, only in this city. It has also, like the old clubs,
shown capacity for achieving the unusual; as, in the reception it arranged, a
few years ago, to Amundsen, who first reached the South Pole, Captain Peary, of
North Pole fame, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, also of such distinction in polar
exploration. I remember how extremely interesting it was to meet three Polar
explorers of such remarkable achievements in one single group.
You will hear
of vague traditions, or of memories almost as vague, of clubs which centered
about the Schuylkill region; there was a skating club, whose members carried
ropes to rescue such of the women or girls as should break through; the ice of
the Schuylkill always having deceitful qualities near the dam and the falls at
the water-works. And of course it was all a very exclusive matter, and none but
men of this set might carry ropes and none but girls of the same set were to
fall in and be rescued.
And
there is still a clubhouse, not far above the dam, for ladies; a most quiet
little club—primarily for boating and canoeing, and just the place for a pretty
dance to be given by a mother for her young daughter, not quite
"out," or for bridge parties, or afternoon teas, and twice in the
spring and twice in the autumn for a special luncheon for members. In
describing such things from the Philadelphia
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standpoint the
word "exclusive" is from necessity quite overworked!
Philadelphia
is naturally a clubable city: to use a word beloved of Doctor Johnson, himself
a mighty club man; and of clubs for women the Acorn is of marked interest. It
is located on Walnut Street, occupying an old mansion as quiet and
unostentatious as itself; the mansion possesses the distinction of a smallish
garden beside it, entered from the street by a beautiful gateway with white
marble pillars and wrought-iron grille. “It is so pretty to give a dance here
for a daughter," said one of the members. "It is so safe," added
another, simply: "safe" being a word still honored in Philadelphia
society.
It is not a
club with a set motive, it stands for no "ism" or reform: it is just
a delightful meeting place for delightful women, it seems to be delightfully
managed, and in the old-time house that it has acquired in the choice
residential district near Rittenhouse Square it has acquired not only the
typical look of permanence but the appearance of having been in existence for a
very long time.
The
college women of Philadelphia follow traditions of the city's club life in
their College Club, and, in their quiet, broad-fronted, properly-located old
mansion, carry on their very modern activities in the atmosphere of the mellow
and the old. And there are other clubs for women. One, Centennially descended,
is on Twelfth Street, and teems with twentieth century activities. And West
Philadelphia, a great residence city in itself, has one of the most
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active woman's
clubs in the country, the Philomusian, which began romantically in a stable.
The Union
League, located centrally, on Broad Street, is a club of huge membership,
composed of men who represent the professions and business. It dates from the
time of the Civil War. It is Republican; but this has been so strongly a
Republican city, in fact so overwhelmingly so, that thus far this restriction
has not greatly narrowed its representative quality.
Its great
Lincoln Hall, with its dignified proportions, its somber Hall of Fame, the many
paintings of Americans of modern days, all aid in giving the great club-house
individuality and importance. The paintings are particularly interesting, for,
leaving to other associations or organizations the preservation of portraits of
men of the Revolutionary and early formative years, the Union League has
gathered portraits, that in time will become invaluable, of Grant and Stanton
and Burnside, of Meade and Roosevelt and Dewey, of Thomas and Sheridan and Pope
and Meade, and many another of the moderns.
The
club has already taken on that curious typical look of always having existed
and of promising to exist forever. Yet it is a tremendously busy club, with
hundreds of members lunching here every week-day. And yet, even at midday there
are long, stretches of quiet halls, and there are restful and quiet rooms, and
there is a library, with case after case of books, and here—a sight not to be
seen in New York or Chicago or even Boston you will see
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numerous men
sitting, at noontime, quietly reading as if the afternoon had no demands. And
entered by a door under the steps which the men ascend, is a great dining-room
for the wives of members, and so famous is the cuisine that the room is crowded
daily at luncheon.
Fox-hunting
has been a feature of social life since before the days of the Revolution, and
the first formal fox-hunting club was formed in 1766, with such names as Chew
and Wharton and Willing, Cadwalader, Mifflin and Morris. A sport thus
sanctioned by the most august names could not avoid popularity in perpetuity.
Foxes still conveniently abound within much of the territory close to the city;
I have seen them running, wild and unpursued, within a dozen miles of City
Hall; and there are several hunting clubs still existent, including the Rose
Tree Hunt, the Whitemarsh, the Radnor, the Meadowbrook. And it is a pretty
sight to see the hunters come sweeping across the fields, with their horses
leaping the stone boundary walls, and with the scarlet-coated M. F. H. in the
lead.
Golf clubs are
also numerous in the Philadelphia suburbs, perhaps the most widely known being
the Huntington Valley, with its so highly attractive grounds. In the days that
now seem old, though really but a few years ago, it was customary here, on the
part of some of the members, to apply the lines that Pope almost wrote:
|
"A little drinking is
a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not
the golf-playing spring," |
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And I
remember, one, night, being on a south-bound trolley which stopped on the hill,
at the clubhouse, for several of the members; the first managed, with difficulty,
to reach the platform only to lunge ahead and stumble to the pavement upon the
other side. The second and third did the same, amid hilarious cries of joy. The
fourth managed to check himself, the conductor sharply rang the bell, and the
car went on.
"The
Street of Little Clubs" is a fascinating feature of the city. It is also a
unique feature. No other city has a street precisely like it. It is remindful
or some parts of the Latin Quarter, but it is really not like the Latin
Quarter. It is distinctly and distinctively American. Outwardly, it is a bit of
American antiquity. To enter the street is like stepping back into the past
century. It is a picturesque street. And it is fresh and charming, though it
bears the marks of age.
"The
Street of Little Clubs" runs south from Walnut Street, between Twelfth and
Thirteenth. Of course it has another name, and that is Camac Street. It is a
narrow street; in fact, it was laid out as one of the early, old-fashioned
alleys, with demure little homes along either side. And many of the houses are
still here, dormer-windowed, low, squatty, dumpy, small; yet always
picturesque.
The street itself
is rough-paved, giving thus an additional aspect of age, and the sidewalks are
wavering and uneven and narrow, and the central pavement is so narrow that
automobiles cannot pass, as a
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single car
fills the space from curb to curb. And along the curb lines are rows of iron
posts which look like cannon, set in with muzzles downward, in a revel of the
erratic, as to angles.
In front of
same of the quaint little houses are little signs, as if they, were inns; but
they are club signs, marking the club homes of some of the most interesting
organizations of the city.
One is the
Plastic Club, a club for women artists and sculptors, another is the Sketch
Club, a name which indicates what it really is. One, the Coin d'Or, was
organized with the delightful artistic intent of keeping alive the best
traditions of French cooking. Among the others—for I need not name every one—is
the Poor Richard Club, thus named to honor the patron saint of the city; and
most important of all is the Franklin Inn, which is not an inn, but a club also
named in honor of the greatest of all Philadelphians.
These demure,
old-time, little houses, with their fronts and shutters now showing blue or
yellow or red or gray, or perhaps saffron or pink—for the colorists have not
been content with the dun and the drab!—show interiorly much greater space and
spaces than is indicated by the outsides, for several of them, notably the
Franklin Inn, have turned two small houses into one, by taking out dividing
walls, and most if not an have at least one large room, made by the throwing of
the upstairs space into unpartitioned spaciousness. Behind some of them are
little gardens, and they are likely to be classic in design.
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The big rooms
are used for exhibitions, for meeting places, for lectures, for theatricals.
Their ways are ways of pleasantness and all the arts increase. The clubs stand for
all that is best in artistic advancement. Here the sacred fire is kept burning,
rather than in more pretentious places in more pretentious quarters. And that
the arts include not only painting and modeling and cooking, but writing, is
shown by the Franklin Inn, which stands not only for picture-makers but, more
distinctively, for the Philadelphians who aim at distinction with novels or
histories, with plays or essays or short stories, with newspaper work or with
education. And a general note of all the Little Clubs is the absence of
extravagance.
It seems
impossible, incredible, but Philadelphia possesses the oldest existing club
organization in the world, at least of those whose members speak the English
language. It was founded in 1732, under the name of the Colony in Schuylkill,
but changed its name in 1783 to the State in Schuylkill.
This oldest of
all clubs, whether in England or America, was organized with the love of fish
and fishing as its basis, and at first, and for a long time, it was located on
the Schuylkill River, from which river it was driven by the growth of the
city's manufacturing and by public parks, and it sought refuge on the banks of
the Delaware, near Andalusia, on the way to Bristol; thither, too, it removed
its "castle" and there lovingly set it up; this "castle,"
as they call it, being a plain small building, of frame, look-
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ing something
like a rural chapel, with round topped windows and tiny cupola. But this
“castle" serious matter, for it is one of the fortresses of exclusiveness.
The Philadelphia Almanach de Gotha might be made up from the membership lists,
past and present, of a few old organizations, and this is markedly one of the
few.
It is limited
to a membership of twenty-five. It has a governor and council, the principal
councilor being secretary of state. It has sheriff and coroner and purveyor,
and others. Few of the twenty-five are plain citizens. There are also
"'apprentices," waiting their chance of membership, and they must
qualify as excellent cooks, and must serve the others "cheerfully."
The apprentices, all of them young men of family, must eat standing, unless
asked to sit; and it is expected that their training will make them so expert
as to turn the broiling fish in air.
At their
formal meetings the members still drink, standing, the toast of
"Washington." And their "fish-house punch" is famous for
savor and for potency, and the secret of its concoction is jealously kept.
Lafayette, on
his visit to this country half a century after his first coming, was made an
honorary member of the State in Schuylkill, and went, to the
"castle," and, invested with white linen apron and broad straw hat,
stood before the fire and did, his part as cook. And he said, felicitously,
that with this coming to the State in Schuylkill; he had now completed his tour
of all the States in the Union.
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The oldest in
years of the original list of 1732 was Thomas Stretch, who, for it began as a
club of youngish men, was born in 1695. He
was made the first governor, and, such being the typical Philadelphia respect for age and
experience, he was continued as governor until his death in 1766. The next governor, Samuel Morris, governed
from the year to 1812. Only two governors
from 1732 to 1812!
An ardent
collector of Germantown showed me one day a piece of old silver which, she
said, had belonged to a governor of Pennsylvania, Samuel Morris, and she was
amused to find that he had been Governor of the State of the Schuylkill.
[The Philadelphia Club]
