One of the burdens of London life today is that we devote too much time to work and too little to the sophistication of elegant unwinding. It is easy to mix only with one’s office colleagues and then trundle home to the demands of home life without a healthy decompression between. Too much noise, too many delayed trains and tubes, too little of the unexpected makes for dullness.
The wonderful thing about
clubs is that they offer variety, intelligent but not overbearingly
intellectual friendship and engagement over a glug of something served in
crystal. You can meet vaguely like-minded souls from other occupations. You can
attend lectures and special lunches if you desire, and in the evenings there
are occasional less than usual gathering such as the Eccentric Club, to which I
was kindly invited to hold a speech about the art of wearing bowties and what
it requires and entails, from mindset to dexterity.
A matter for just a few
gentlemanly types you may say? Well it is too easy to look like a prize idiot
when sporting a bow tie rather than the habitue of Gooodwood Estate comfortable
in best tweed or the pages of James Bond (any of the characters you might
choose, James Bond is a brand not a person and one that will be forever
associated with looking dashing and living in the world of The Club).
So whilst getting ready to
impart the world-changing truth on such important subjects as ribbon width and
how one’s facial features impact the shape of a bow I found my mind wandering
to the whole world of Clubs and gentlemanly life.
Think about it, the word “club” is an elastic affair. It
can mean a discotheque, a sports association or an after-work boozer for trendy
30-somethings where the barmaid wears a string vest and hails you with the
words ‘ello darlin’ or “ hiya mate”.
To me, a
Club ought to be a comfortable home-away-from-home, a urban billet where they
serve good but not over-fussy dishes, where they have a few reasonably priced
bedrooms ( just in case ), where the staff make an effort to be smart,
courteous but not overbearing and where a chap can retire to a low-slung,
deep-buttoned leather armchair with a copy of that morning’s newspapers, maybe
to catch up on some incongruous style columnists drivel as a guilty pleasure
without being told off for snoring. That’s my sort of club, anyway.
The
Savile Club in Mayfair, one block up from Claridge’s Hotel and one down from
Grosvenor Square at whose far end glowers the 1960 monstrosity of the U.S.
embassy, is an 18th century affair done up in the ornate Parisian manner with
twirl cornices and mirrors at every turn. If you called its architectural style
wildly camp you would not be entirely wrong.
All I
can say is that I could not have imagined a more beautiful setting and,
returning to my subject, a better audience for this speech opportunity. In
other words mixed in with a smattering of happy drunks, the odd bore and the occasional ex-convict were a wonderful collection
of professionals, composers, hot air balloonists, refined gentlemen of independent
means and ladies with life stories that could make your average Victorian
executioner blush. What a perfect place. What a perfect evening.
Thanks to David De Vynel and Imants von Wenden for the invitation.
Photo
credits @Annadvk