Good Manners In Clubs

Good manners in clubs are the same as good manners elsewhere—only a little more so. A club is for the pleasure and convenience of many; it is never intended as a stage-setting for a " star" or " clown" or " monologist." There is no place where a person has greater need of restraint and consideration for the reserves of others than in a club. In every club there is a reading-room or library where conversation is not allowed; there are books and easy chairs and good light for reading both by day and night; and it is one of the unbreakable rules not to speak to anybody who is reading—or writing.

When two people are sitting by themselves and talking, another should on no account join them unless he is an intimate friend of both. To be a mere acquaintance, or, still less, to have been introduced to one of them, gives no privilege whatever.

The fact of being a club member does not (except in a certain few especially informal clubs) grant any one the right to speak to strangers. If a new member happens to find no one in the club whom he knows, he goes about his own affairs. He either sits down and reads or writes, or " looks out of the window, " or plays solitaire, or occupies himself as he would if he were alone in a hotel.

It is courteous of a governor or habitual member, on noticing a new member or a visitor, especially one who seems to be rather at a loss—to go up and speak to him, but the latter must on no account be the one to speak first. Certain New York and Boston clubs, as well as those of London, have earned a reputation for snobbishness because the members never speak to those they do not know. Through no intent to be disagreeable, but just because it is not customary, New York people do not speak to those they do not know, and it does not occur to them that strangers feel slighted until they themselves are given the same medicine in London; or going elsewhere in America, they appreciate the courtesy and kindness of the South and West.

The fundamental rule for behavior in a club is the same as in the drawing-room of a private house. In other words, heels have no place on furniture, ashes belong in ash-receivers, books should not be abused, and all evidence of exercising should be confined to the courts or courses and the locker room. Many people who wouldn't think of lolling around the house in unfit attire, come trooping into country clubs with their steaming faces, clammy shirts, and rumpled hair, giving too awful evidence of recent exertion, and present fitness for the bathtub.