Yesterday at noon I was picked up at home by an octogenarian professor, a wizened little bearded man who is one of the premier specialists on the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was dressed in a neat dark suit and floral silk tie, and had invited me to be his guest for lunch at the Cosmos Club, where he is an emeritus member. I had heard of the Cosmos Club—in fact, I had applied (unsuccessfully) for one of their Foundation's graduate research scholarships a couple of years ago—but hadn’t any other information about its character, other than a vague awareness of its location, and that it was terribly exclusive. So, I dressed appropriately. I am not a Southern girl for nothing.
The weather was lovely, the sky clear, the sun warm, and just a touch of late-winter coolness in the air. There was a parking spot in the small lot adjacent to the building, for which I was grateful, as the good professor is fairly delicate (he had some trouble with the stairs at our apartment complex). We were buzzed in a modest side entrance. The unlit room before us lacked the artificial shine of a so-called “luxury” hotel or other superficial bourgeois decoration. In fact, it could have been thought slightly down-at-heel by a casual observer. But then to the left, in a plexiglass vitrine, was an original Frederick Hart sculpture, and the carpet on the floor was beautifully hand-knotted. In the small hallway to the left, a tiny plaque underneath framed philately noted these were “members pictured on foreign stamps.” We were shown to a table by the large garden-view bay window in the dining room. Perhaps twelve other people were there, in assorted couples and quartets, talking to their companions in modulated tones over white china and white tablecloths.
After we had consulted our menus (no prices were listed, but the fare was generally simple), the professor carefully filled out a paper chit (so labeled at its top) with our choices and signed it. And we talked. The food, like the atmosphere, was quietly excellent—no overlarge or scant portions, neither bland nor spicy, just enough for satisfaction and so that a dessert would be a pleasant postscript. After the leisurely meal, the professor showed me around the premises. A large hall had framed 8x10 photographs lining either wall. As we entered from the dining room, I noticed that a small sign on the right hand wall identified that group of pictures as of “members who have won Nobel Prizes.” On the left, first were members who had received the annual Cosmos Club award, and then “members who have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.” The Professor showed me a photograph of his former mentor, whom he described as tough to get along with, but a “brilliant scholar.” The picture of the irascible, now long-deceased, academic was in a nook behind the Nobel Prize winners, but I did not get to confirm the collective designation of it and its fellows (Pulitzer Prize, perhaps?), as two young men, one in Air Force uniform, the other in a suit, were sitting on a bench within (acolytes waiting for their senior to finish lunch, I guessed, as I had been the youngest in the dining room by at least a decade).
Then we ascended the main stairs (he carefully clutching the banister over the ornate iron railing), which curved past a magnificent and enormous Renaissance tapestry up to drawing rooms dating from the belle époque. Apparently the house where the club is now established had belonged to a wealthy couple not unknown to the Vanderbilt clan and their circle at the turn of the previous century, and their decorative legacy still survives. The library was my dream—high carved ceilings, a giant stone fireplace (obviously late medieval, torn from its European castle and re-installed in the New World), leather armchairs, tall windows flanked with burgundy silk curtains through which the warm light streamed onto the antique oriental rug and brightened the mahogany paneling and bookcases—oh my, I practically salivated. There was at least one whole bookcase with the latest works by club members—mostly political or historical, a few intimidating treatises on scientific subjects. And there was a whole table display devoted to Shakespeare and Shakespeare-performance. The professor showed me the stone stairs leading to the garden (opposite that we’d come through into the house) where his son had gotten married, and the interior dining room where the reception had been held.
He and his daughter are going to Belgium this week—he to a conference, she to sightsee in a place she hasn’t visited since she was living there with her family as a girl. I asked him if the two of them were going to stay in a reciprocal club in Belgium—apparently the Cosmos is modeled after the old English Pall Mall clubs down to the private rooms that members can maintain permanently or stay in overnight periodically, and it has a reciprocal relationship with such similiarly-ordered social institutions in Europe, both in the United Kingdom and on the continent—but he said that he had a favorite hotel in Brussels that he much preferred.
We were back out in the sunshine in the parking lot before the subject of my administering a test to his undergraduate students was mentioned—one does not discuss business in the club, he said. He’s supposed to be in Germany when this particular midterm is scheduled—he will be coming back from Belgium this weekend—and so needed a substitute. I’m it. I’m glad that the pre-emptive recompense for my assistance included such an exceptional cultural experience as visiting the Cosmos Club.
If it weren’t already obvious, club members are the intellectual elite, or those that are considered so by their peers. As far as I can determine, one does not apply for membership, but is recommended and elected—this is rather like the procedure of the Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters Golf Tournament. Seemingly, in either case, to express overt interest in membership is the most sure method of assuring that one will never be invited to become a part of the organization.
Visiting the place having had little sleep the night before was perhaps the ideal condition in which to do so—it numbed me to the overabundance of secular accomplishment recorded by the august members, as well as to the insanely sophisticated surroundings. Thus, I was able to dine in the vicinity of living personal greatness (none of which bearers I recognized) and stroll past rare artistic works without discomfort, dispassionately recording the details without being psychologically overwhelmed by them. And then when I got home, I had to frantically finish formatting the footnotes of translation I’d done from Russian into English (this for Alyosha, a fellow graduate student, whom I charged $25 an hour for the service) and run over to campus to deliver it to him. Just as it has been remarked that the necessity of doing laundry regularly can keep one from going mad from the pressures of motherhood, I think that the necessity of my attending to picayune academic responsibilities kept me from dwelling overmuch on others’ excessive accomplishments.
