Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1918 — LONDON CLUB for AMERICAN OFFICERS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LONDON CLUB for AMERICAN OFFICERS

« VERY officer of the United |" —States forces who comes to - London is bidden welcome in one of the finest mansions the capital can show, , V and it is in some slight return for all the clubs and private hospitality that Englishmen have always received in America that the house has been turned into an American Officers club, writes J. P. Collins, London correspondent of the Boston Transcript. As such the king and queen opened it with a visit of inspection and approval without formality, and declared their pleasure that it had retained the homelike atmosphere. That, in a word, is the main charm of the place, and the donor, Lord Leconfield, has added sunshine to daylight by making the gift complete, for he has put not only his house but its contents at the disposal of the committee concerned. Leconfield house is favored in its situation.’ It backs upon old Chesterfield house, where the writer of the famous (and infamous) letters kept Doctor Johnson' waiting on the mat a century and a half ago, until the great Samuel turned in his wrath and indited a letter which is worth all his lordship s epistles combined. You may read in these same epistles all about the glories of Chesterfield house and what it was meant to be; but it cannot compare for comfort with its neighbor, and a club without this quality of comfort is no club at all. It stands off Curzon street, the street where Smollett starved, Disraeli died, and Becky Sharp cut a fashionable and dashing figure before her great collapse. It is the high street of Mgyfair, which is the most privileged and cozy of our London parishes, because it skirts the best end of Piccadilly and the royal quarters, and puts you within five minutes of Whitehall and everywhere that matters, by means of a pleasant saunter across the green park.

Lord Leconfield is a nephew of* Lord Rosebery, and a cousin to the late George Wyndham, the courtly statesman and critic. His lordship is a pleasant blend of both these interesting figures, except that he has never shown the Primrose Earl’s turn for graceful oratory, and revealed compensating good sense by leaving politics practically alone. He has served in the First Life Guards and commanded the Sussex Imperial Yeomanry; besides which he saw fighting in South ’ Africa, and got a wound there. All his proclivities are for travel and sport. He inherits from the third Earl of Egremont all the glorious Turners at his chief country seat, Petworth in Sussex, and his family have always had an eye for a good picture. It is all the more gratifying and generous, therefore, that in handing his town house over, he has left his ancestors and their friends undisturbed upon the walls; so that the new inmates for so long as the war may last, and perhaps a little beyond, will find stately company in some of the best-known master nortraits by Van Dyck and Sir Peter Lely.

This very generosity, however, was an occasion of misgivings, for the rarities and nick-knacks that make for distinction and Interest in a private abode may be redundancies or even a nuisance tn a club. When Lord Leconfleld, as an old Pilgrim—and a founder, by •the way—asked his brother Pilgrims to take the place and the scheme in hand, he gave them carte blanche to do as they would with the furniture and belongings. They boarded up the

valuable library, especially a certain case whose contents are “worth their weight,” as the saying goes; and in front of this, as a suitable screen, or cover, they placed a life-size portrait of another famous Pilgrim, Lord Roberts, and no more popular figure than “Bobs” could grace an assemblage of service men. The committee made further alterations in the same key. They stored much of the costlier and more Cumbrous furniture and replaced it with an ample supply of cozy armchairs auRT lounges. And with a shrewd eye to their surroundings, as well as the caliber of the men who are to put them to use, the committee have seen that everything Imported, whether for use or ornament, answers to the demands of taste as well as utility, with the result that every room, from the dining room to the card rooms and the office, looks as if it were planned in the piece, and a member of this new club, therefore, can invite a guest with the feeling that he is doing the honors of a great house and not a compromise between a hotel and an institution. There is nothing of the stereotyped or codified caravansefal about Leconfield house.

Without any conscious effort whatsoever in this direction, the committee has certainly contrived a result which leaves no room for qualms as to the hospitable effect produced. It is recorded of the last of Egremont already mentioned as the patron of Turner and Constable and many a 'great artist besides, that on his recovery from illness he celebrated the fact by entertaining four thousand people to dinner, and such was his reputation as a host, that half again this number of his humbler neighbors attended in addition ; nor were they mistaken in their man, for he sent out orders at once and made room for them all. In a house where such large traditions reign, it would be out of place to put the new inmates to any inconvenience or uneasiness as to terms, so there is to be no subscription, and though it Is considered wise to Institute a modest scale of tariff charges, it •would come nearer the aims and Ideals of the committee to offer “open house” if this were possible. As one of the committee said to me, “We want to lose money on it, instead of making it,” and this expresses the originating idea in an appropriate, spirit.

There is to be no embargo upon membership. So long as a man holds a commission in the United States army or navy he is a welcome member during his stay in this country, and the hope is, as the membership grows, to make the scheme keep pace with the demand by bringing neighboring houses into the scheme, with Leconfield house as headquarters and a social center. But the ruling idea is not limited to Mayfair or even to London by any means. It is hoped, and all the evidence are tending to justify that hope, that the club will prove a stepping-

stone into the best society in the kingdom, and that well-known hosts and owners of great houses in town and country who have a trout stream or a golf course or a bit of good shooting at their disposal will come forward and offer a week-end as often as possible to a party of guests from Leconfield house. Distinguished Pilgrims on this side are setting the example. To this end, an information bureau has been started in order to put every member so desirous in touch with a round of golf, a game of tennis or polo or rackets, a day’s shooting or fishing, or a car ride as far as the present regulation supply of petrol allows. An American bar adds to the verisimilitude of the scheme, and an expert dispenser of the Bacchic mysteries has been put in charge; while the lounges and the library are already reeking with all the best and liveliest periodicals of both hemispheres. Once a week there will be a ladies’ night, with a ladies’ hospitality committee in charge of the arrangement. =. '

The first thing that struck me as I entered was the grouping of colors at the head of the staircase, and this sight of a well-hung Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes blent in the vividest and newest of Silk and in complete repose, took on a healthy aspect of permanence. Usually in London -you sec them flying mast-high above our nest-known buildings on a royal birthday or the Fourth of July,, but to see them grouped like this everyday of the YVeek about the bust of Pallas, goddess of defense, at the head of the handsome main staircase, lent a touch of delicious completeness to everything. The same thoroughness has been carried out in the fitting of the billiard tables, with an eye to the fine points of difference between the American and the English game; and upstairs on the bedroom floor, every touch is there to remind a guest on waking that he is not roughing it in a “dug-out” but taking his ease a vast deal nearer “home.” All this dawned upon you without enforcement during an invitation visit the other day, and the quality of the lunch and its presentment were sufficient reassurance as to the cuisine, the service and the cellar. Mr. Harry JI. Brittain, perhaps the best-known Pilgrim, presided as chairman of the club and the hardest worker in connection with it, and he showed in his remarks of welcome how enthusiastically the project has caught on with hi* brother members ever since Lord Leconfield set the ball a-rolling. He spoke of the everlasting debt of gratitude he owed Americans since the day whea he landed on .your shores, an adven-ture-loving Oxford graduate twenty years ago, only to find, apparently, that America had no conception what the word stranger meant. He added that he was ambitious, he and his fellow promoters, of making the club a link of the highest value between the two countries and the two services—a means of repaying the great and many kindnesses that British visitors have received out West —and a medium of sympathy not merely in connection with the war but everything else that appeals to English-speaking men today.