‘If we no longer have to hug other men, that’s a bonus’
As private members’ clubs prepare to open again, Christopher Silvester looks at how they have coped and what their plans are
This week sees London’s clubland emerge from lockdown and gingerly start to reopen its doors to members – but, as with pubs and restaurants, life will seem a little different from before. Temperatures will be taken on arrival, hand sanitiser will be dispensed under the watchful eyes of staff, and forms will have to be filled on arrival for tracing purposes.
While not all clubs deem it sensible to reopen just yet – Pratt’s, which is owned by the Duke of Devonshire, is using the time to do some muchneeded building work – several have remained open since March, providing accommodation, along with roomservice breakfasts and evening meals, for key workers. The Cavalry and Guards and the RAF in Piccadilly, the Army and Navy in St James’s Square, and the Victory Services Club in Marble Arch have enjoyed a welcome boost in this regard.
“But even if you do reopen, will members come?” asks Alistair Telfer, club secretary and chief executive of the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. The majority of members in most clubs belong to an older age demographic, and some of them will have specific health conditions that render them even more vulnerable.
For every Lord Sumption (a Garrick member) who wishes to manage his own risk, there are plenty of others who will stay away until the whole country appears closer to the way things were before lockdown. Anyone with a cough will almost certainly stay at home out of politeness and consideration, whether they suspect it’s Covid-related or not.
Although it may seem counterintuitive for a world that is often unfairly regarded as antediluvian, clubland has embraced the internet during lockdown. The Lansdowne Club, in Mayfair, has organised Zoom drinks receptions and even bake-offs, with everyone following the same recipe and the head chef choosing the winners based on photographs rather than an actual tasting.
The Lansdowne also allowed a pianist into the building to use their Steinway for a concert it recorded and made available to members online.
Of the Oxford and Cambridge Club’s 5,000 members, 2,000 are resident overseas. “We’ve been doing webinars and online lectures with Q&A afterwards,” says Telfer. “We had 194 members online to watch Professor Rana Mitter speaking on China, and what was interesting was the number of overseas members who registered – around 40 from 13 different countries. We did it at 5pm so that members from both East and West could catch it.”
The Athenaeum has offered its members three Zoom discussions per month, based on its archive of past lectures, which participants are invited to read beforehand. The Naval and Military Club hosted a Zoom Waterloo dinner, while The Carlton Club sent cases of wine to members and held a online tasting session.
For the Zoom drinks at the Savile Club, in Mayfair, on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons, one member, Gareth Neame, the producer of
Downton Abbey, has been delving into the club’s folklore by listening to all those Savilians, past and present, who have featured on Desert Island Discs, links to which are on the club’s website.
Neame was aware of the legacy of these “great conductors, composers and literary figures, but I’m too young to have heard them talk, and it’s been wonderful to hear their voices”.
The Garrick has provided its members with a cornucopia of online fare, including recorded performances, poetry readings, an online caricature exhibition, recipes (some with demonstration videos), and quizzes.
There is also a WhatsApp group in which around 90 members share jokes, recipes, cartoons, photos, YouTube clips, nostalgia, and otherwise occasionally sound off about current affairs. One participant, an anaesthetist working on the Covid-19 front line, has been able to offer reassuring medical insight.
“I have found that contact with the Garrick and the Savile has really helped me,” says Neame, a member of both clubs, “because you do have a sense that you’ve been able to keep in touch with chums.”
There is also a Garrick food and wine home delivery service (the term “takeaway” would be infra dig) for members who live within five miles of
‘You do have a sense that you’ve been able to keep in touch with chums’
Covent Garden. “It’s been a great morale booster when we’ve had Radek and Juan arrive at our front door with their visors and face masks, dressed in pink Garrick T-shirts and carrying our order,” says Neame, who lives in Chiswick.
From hereon, the ability of each club to reopen with confidence will depend to a large extent on their particular spatial configurations.
“Clubs are not like supermarkets,” says Telfer. “They can’t operate on a one-way system of movement, and there will be some spaces where members will be closer than two metres. Some club members are fatalists and you have to be careful not to nanny them more than they want to be nannied. If they choose to sit next to each other in the library and chat, are we going to act as policemen and tell them they shouldn’t?”
Still, there will be challenges, especially at supper time. The Athenaeum, in Pall Mall, has a vast dining room, which caters mainly for couples and small groups. But their
“club table” (at which members can mix with other members) typically seats about a dozen, and the Centre Table at the Garrick on a normal busy day seats as many as 30 members, all cheek by jowl.
There is a large garden at the back of the Athenaeum with an al-fresco terrace for lunch and dinner in the summer months, and elsewhere in the club, there is a huge Smoking Room where members take coffee and where social distancing will present no challenges.
Some other clubs have outside space. The Savile has a courtyard and dining terrace, the Cavalry and Guards has a conservatory, and the Garrick has a rooftop smoking terrace surrounding the cupola above its main staircase as well as a small smoking balcony in its downstairs bar.
However, there’s a clear appetite for clubs to return to normal. When the Chelsea Arts Club announced that it would be reopening tomorrow, with the main dining room reduced to half capacity at 60, it sold out within a few hours.
Several clubs have three-week summer closures in August, which is always a quiet month anyway. But some club members are not planning to come back into London until there is a vaccine.
The clubs themselves are taking few chances. The Naval and Military have installed “tiger traps” for both staff and members on arrival; thermal cameras will digitally scan and live-stream their inner temperatures to see if they could have Covid-19. Members will be vetted and expected to clean hands with hand sanitiser in front of a member of staff, and the club has adopted a way of sterilising every bedroom within an hour or so.
“So many of the precautions we are potentially having to take are so much the antithesis of the conviviality of clubland that part of you thinks ‘what’s the point?’,” says Neame. “And, on the other hand, you’ve got to just give it a go. When my grandfather Ronnie Neame was making films back in the 1930s and ’40s, there was no vaccine for polio or tuberculosis. People took a risk and got on with their lives.
“As far as I’m concerned, when my clubs reopen, I shall be back like a shot. If one good thing comes out of this it will be that men no longer feel obliged to hug or, God forbid, kiss one another. That will be a dividend.”