October 20, 2009

Really rich men smoking quietly in corners

“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good club.” I thought of that quote by Esmond Warner (d. 1984), the late honorary librarian of Brooks’s in London, when I was in Barcelona in recent days. Breakfasting at the Circulo Ecuestre, lunching at the Royal Polo Club and dining at the Circulo del Liceo (part of the Opera house) was not only great fun, but convinced me that Spaniards (and Catalans) really know how to put their own stamp on the gentlemen’s club tradition. True, the kind of club lore and eccentricities that Gerald and I report on at length in our book was not much in evidence. But your cardiologist will thank for skipping the grouse and bread sauce in London and going for Barcelona’s olive oil-perfumed arroz with a vast bounty of crustacea (though I also had excellent grouse at the Travellers Club — renowned for its game — before flying down to Barcelona on easyJet).

Speaking of club lore, I’m not just thinking of the likes of Bernard Fergusson, the onetime New Zealand governor-general famous for “the skill with which he could toss his monocle in the air and catch it in his eye”. It’s the whole mythology, much of it so close to reality that it hardly needs embellishment. In our tome, we report in some detail on the once-legendary Clubland guerrilla war between on-again, off-again friends Evelyn Waugh and Randolph Churchill. In order to avoid running into Churchill at White’s, Waugh frequently went to the St. James’ Club instead (which later merged with Brooks’s). Waugh wrote: “I have taken refuge here from White’s which has become uninhabitable since the budget — all the men who to my certain knowledge have not £100 in the world yelling themselves hoarse (and I think sincerely believing) that they are ruined and the dozen or so really rich men smoking quietly in corners having made themselves registered companies in Costa Rica years ago”.

Whether Waugh ever ran into Herr Ribbentrop in the St. James’ is not known. The onetime bubbly merchant who became Hitler’s foreign minister was, earlier, the Nazi ambassador in London — and so had membership privileges there. (It was said he “rose to fame on foam of champagne” and “Went in early for Hitler”.) Another St. James’ member was rudely kept waiting for dinner by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, another less than gentlemanly specimen. “I have been shooting,” said Goering. “Animals, I hope?” was the quite reasonable question in response.

So, given the way the 20th Century unfolded, it required an entire generation of clubmen to fight the baddies. Loel Guinness, a member of that great Irish family and a courageous fighter pilot, help put together an enterprising group of club denizens into an efficient volunteer air squadron in London funded out of their own pockets — the 601. Getting fuel was a problem. Guinness apparently said, “I think that I’m a director of Shell”. His commander snapped back, “What do you mean ‘think’? Telephone your secretary and find out.” And so he was, a very helpful development for the squadron, even if the story doesn’t quite meet today’s lofty corporate governance standards.