admits both men and
women as members, and which the wags have therefore nicknamed the
Middlesex club. An English gentleman being urged to join this club on
the ground that he could take his wife there, plumply refused on that
very ground, saying that the chief good in a club consisted in its
being a refuge for married men. Whereupon the average woman exclaims,
"The brute! What did he marry for if he wanted to be rid of his wife?"
A view of the case not unnatural perhaps in a woman, but most unwise.
Passing by the not very remote possibility that there are women (as
there are men) who in the matrimonial lottery could not be regarded as
prizes, there are strong reasons for the exclusion of women, even the
most charming, from clubs. For women a man may see at home daily or in
society. It is in those places that he expects to find them; there they
naturally belong; there they are attractive. But when he sets up a club
it is for the very purpose of enjoying man companionship and indulging
his mannish tastes. He wishes there to be entirely at his ease, and not
to be called on for "little attentions." He wears his hat in the
club-house if he likes, and he does not wish to be called upon to take
it off unless he likes. In short, he wishes there to be free, for a
time, from the restraints which the presence of ladies puts upon the
conduct and conversation of men, even of those who neither in act nor
in speech pass the bounds of reasonable decorum. Women in clubs are
pretty annoyances, fine things very much out of place. Moreover, it is
true, although by most women, particularly married women, it will not
be believed, that clubs, by their exclusion of women, make the society
of the sex more pleasant to the average man, and tend to keep warm the
marital love of the average husband. Woman, whether to her credit or
not we shall not undertake to decide, can bear the continued
companionship of a favored man much better than man can bear that of a
woman, no matter how beautiful, how charming, or how much beloved. But
even women are happier for the inevitable separation from them of their
husbands every day and during a greater part of the day. As to men,
unfortunately many of them would begin to weary of a woman, and at last
to dislike her, if they were compelled to pass every evening in her
company. Here the club steps in (we are not speaking of the mere "club
man"), and interposes its conservative influence. Many a man's love is
kept