CHAPTER X

A Club Man in New York

WHEN BROOKS WENT TO New York in 1871, the city had about 100 clubs with a total membership of 50,000.1 The Nineteenth Century was a sociable era; nearly every professional or business man belonged to one or more clubs. When the day's work was finished, members went to their clubrooms to rest, relax, smoke, and meet their friends. Such a man was Brooks. “He is thoroughly a club man,” said one reporter, “he enjoys a good dinner and a good story, and can himself give one and tell the other.” Brooks is described as being “a very comfortable and pleasant looking person…amiable and genial, full of anecdote, reminiscence and narrative.” He was “everybody's friend, apparently,” remarked one observer, “and has a kind word and helping hand for every needy or unfortunate person.” Since Brooks never remarried—relishing his freedom too greatly, as he expressed it—clubs took the place of family life for him,² and “socially he was most happily equipped: in friendship he was fastidious, sincere, devoted.”³

The Lotos Club

The first organization Brooks joined was the Lotos Club, founded by six young journalists on March 15, 1870, and incorporated on the twenty-ninth of the following month.⁴ Brooks became a member in 1873 and remained active in the Lotos until his resignation sometime between 1887 and 1890. The club took its name from a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson entitled “The Lotos-Eaters,”⁵ a term which signifies a pleasure seeker.⁶ The Lotos Club was formed as a “meeting ground for the younger men” of art, literature, music, drama, journalism, and other professions,⁷ in “protest against the conservative methods and autocratic ways of certain members” of The Century Association.8 Knowing that artists, musicians, and actors could ill afford the initiation fee of $200, the founders put an article in the constitution which allowed an artist to contribute a painting valued at $200 and authorized the directors to remit any part of the fee for a professional actor or musician.

The first quarters of the Lotos Club were located at No. 2 Irving Place, where the members were somewhat cramped in their small parlors. Nevertheless, they found room to give special dinners and receptions to the outstanding men of letters and art who were visiting in New York.⁹ Very early in its existence, the Lotos Club initiated a weekly Saturday night meeting at which time the members gathered for a dinner and a program of music and recitation.¹⁰ “A charming literary coterie that frequently gathered around” one of the dinner tables comprised Henry Watterson, George Alfred Townsend, D. G. Croly, Stephen Fiske, Noah Brooks, Isaac H. Bromley, and E. W. Vanderhoef. Their “conversation or discussion was most brilliant and ever interesting,” reported one member, “for all named are charming conversationalists, quick at repartee, refulgent with reminiscence, as graphic and forcible in speech as with their pens.” These authors, once started, could relate interesting happenings by the hour, “if their engagements permit them to remain” at the club all evening.¹¹

Another feature of Lotos Saturday Nights was an art exhibit. In the spring of 1872 the club began to collect works of art and built an annex to the house which served as an art gallery.¹² Brooks, who himself owned a valuable collection of paintings,¹³ aided the Lotos Club in obtaining “a notable collection of specimens of the best wood engraving of modern times.”¹⁴ The Saturday art exhibits, which once numbered fifty-five canvases, were left up through Monday when the club held its regular Ladies’ Day program.¹⁵ During the winter months, the Lotos Club gave special musical and literary programs on Monday afternoon for women guests. After the formal program, the ladies were invited to inspect the paintings currently being shown in the gallery. One such exhibition was devoted to French painting with examples from “the different epochs in the art history of that country.”¹⁶

When Brooks joined the Lotos Club in 1873, Whitelaw Reid was president, having been elected that year to heal the rent which had developed between two factions in the club.¹⁷ Reid united the divided elements, but the club still faced a financial problem. To raise funds, the Lotos members decided to publish a limited-edition volume which would contain original contributions written by the many talented members. John Brougham and John Elderkin were selected to edit the book, and Wilkie Collins, Whitelaw Reid, Mark Twain, John Hay, P. V. Nasby [David Ross Locke], and many others composed choice pieces for it. Brooks wrote of his experiences [in] “In Echo Cañon” while en route to California in 1859.18 It is full of local color and describes the beautiful scenery of the Wasatch Mountains. One of the members, William F. Gill, was a publisher, and he not only contributed a story but also printed the volume at his press on Washington Street in Boston. Lotos Leaves: Original Stories, Essays, and Poems was scheduled for publication in November of 1874,¹⁹ but it was not until the following year that the collector's item was finally issued.

After serving three terms as president, Reid declined to run for office in 1876. When the annual election was held on March 18, John Brougham, who had been first vice president, was chosen president, but sharp opposition developed over the remainder of the slate as proposed by the nominating committee. Without Reid, the members again divided into two factions. Isaac H. Bromley and Noah Brooks “came within a few votes of being chosen respectively First and Second Vice-President.” However, the committee's choices, F. A. Schwab and George H. Story, were finally voted into the contested offices.²⁰ Reid's term expired on April 1, and on the eighteenth a complimentary dinner was given to him at which time “a choice collection of pictures was exhibited in the dining-room and gallery.”²¹ But before the year was out, a special election was held. In November Brooks was chosen second vice president, replacing George H. Story; the other officers remained as before. In honor of his election, a complimentary dinner was given to Brooks at the club house on November 25.²² Brooks helped to unite the club again, and when the annual election was held a few months later, on March 17, 1877, “the regular ticket was elected without opposition.” John Brougham was reelected president, Brooks moved up to become first vice president, and Charles I. Pardee replaced Brooks as second vice president.²³ Brooks served as first vice president from 1877 to 1882, and in the absence of the president frequently presided over many of the dinners given to notables. He handled these assignments very well; George Edgar Montgomery said that Brooks was the “presiding genius” of the club.²⁴ At other times, he was called upon to placate annoyed members and keep the Lotos Club running smoothly. When Mark Twain went to Europe in April of 1878, he wanted to resign, but Brooks dissuaded him by promising to put him on half dues during his absence. While in Paris, however, Twain again decided to resign, and Brooks wrote him a friendly letter which tactfully reiterated that he was still on half dues and owed the club only $41.25.²⁵ Twain kept his membership.

On May 1, 1877, the increased prosperity of the Lotos Club was manifested when it moved from No. 2 Irving Place to the Bradish Johnson mansion at 147 Fifth Avenue, near Twenty-first Street.²⁶ Seventy new members had swelled the membership to 350, the limit at that time being set at 400. Their new quarters were “on an ample and luxurious scale” with “[many] of the original rich furnishings intact.” A Saturday night housewarming was held on May 19 with the usual Ladies’ Day reception taking place on the following Monday. Brooks was a member of the art committee which was placed in charge of the new exhibition of paintings hung in one of the parlors.

On the first floor of the new club house were the parlors and dining room; the library, private dining rooms and card room were located on the second floor; and the smoking and billiard rooms were in the basement.27 On the third floor were “elegant quarters” for a few bachelor members of the club. Soon after the Lotos moved to this location at 147 Fifth Avenue, Brooks rented a suite of rooms in the club as did Colonel Thomas Knox, who also was a juvenile story writer.²⁸ Here in the quiet and comfort of his apartment, Brooks did much of his writing. He also ate breakfast at the club where the cook, on cold winter mornings, pampered the resident breakfasters by warming their plates at the fireplace. Brooks loved good food and occasionally would send to Maine for “a fresh Penobscot salmon” which the Lotos Club cook would prepare for him.²⁹ The club had a cat by the name of Richard, and in the mornings this mascot loafed in Brooks's bedroom or sitting room until Brooks would take the cat to breakfast, which for the night editor was always at a late hour. The brownish-yellow cat always sought out Brooks's rooms whenever the Lotos Club entertained ladies because he disliked women. Brooks and Richard were fast friends, but in the summer of 1883 the cat had to be destroyed. He had fallen into a bucket of mortar, while the club house was being repaired, and was severely burned.³⁰

Whenever a dignitary visited New York, he was sure to be invited to a Lotos Club dinner. Besides its close ties to art and literature, the Lotos also had “strong affiliations with the stage” and was “always foremost in giving banquets and receptions to representatives of the English theatre.”³¹ The renowned composing team of William S. Gilbert and Arthur S. Sullivan were feted at the club on November 8, 1879, and Brooks—always on hand for such events—enjoyed meeting and conversing with them.³² The actor John Gilbert was also the guest of the club on November 30, 1878, when ninety members welcomed him to their hearth. “After the speech making was over and the company had thinned out a little,” the guest joined John Brougham and Lester Wallack in singing and telling stories until “a late hour.”³³ On April 14, 1883, Oliver Wendell Holmes appeared at the club as an honored guest and received a great ovation from the members.³⁴ Even the quiet General Grant was persuaded to make a speech at the reception on November 20, 1880.³⁵ Mark Twain enjoyed the atmosphere of the Lotos and was sitting in the parlors on the afternoon of August 5, 1885, when the funeral procession of General Grant passed. Twain also took room and board at the Lotos upon occasion.36

The Lotos Club celebrated its tenth birthday on March 27, 1880, by giving a banquet and inviting the presidents of eleven other clubs. Reid retold the history of the Lotos, and later “a large silver tankard, with two handles, embossed at the base with double-eagle gold pieces, and bearing on its side the design of a Lotos flower, was set before Noah Brooks, at his place opposite the president.” Brooks presented the cup to the club by saying:

I am charged with the pleasant duty of delivering into your custody the loving cup which has been prepared by the members of the club for its use. Its inscription fitly sets forth and commemorates the foundation of the club. We have left, as you see, after the $20 gold pieces—the double eagles—spaces for the mementos of future decennials, and when eight of them are furnished, eighty years will close their course. Edward the Good was stabbed in the back while drinking from a tankard, but it is to be hoped that no member will be stabbed in the back while drinking from this loving cup. And as it passes from lip to lip, and hand to hand, it seems to me that you and I and all of us will unite in the words of our poet, Mr. William Winter.

Brooks then read Winter's poem, “A Lotos Flower,”³⁷ and handed the cup to Reid, who called upon Dr. A. E. Macdonald, the secretary, to respond in behalf of the entire club.³⁸

John Brougham, who had been president of the Lotos Club from 1876 to 1878, died at his home at 60 East Ninth Street on June 7, 1880. He was a noted actor and playwright and one of the oldest members of the club. Brooks immediately called a special meeting of the Lotos to make suitable arrangements for the funeral; Thomas W. Knox, who also lived in the club, served as secretary.³⁹ Brougham, an intimate friend of Brooks,⁴⁰ had been ill since he had returned from a tour on November 7, 1877, and Brooks often presided in his stead at club functions.⁴¹ The funeral was held on June 9 at the Church of the Transfiguration on East Twenty-ninth Street, commonly called “The Little Church around the Corner.” It was the favorite church of New York actors and received its nickname from Joseph Jefferson. When his good friend George Holland died in 1870, Jefferson was asked to make funeral arrangements at one of the prominent churches in the city, but the minister told Jefferson that his church would not bury an actor. The man of God, however, added that “there was a little church around the corner” that would give Holland a simple funeral service. “Then if this be so,” exclaimed the angry Jefferson, “God bless ‘the little church around the corner.’”⁴² The name stuck and was revered by the stage people.43 A large delegation of Lotos members attended Brougham's funeral, and Brooks served as one of the eight pallbearers.⁴⁴

Brooks had loved “Uncle” John Brougham, as he called him, and since the actor had died in debt, Brooks quietly redeemed one of his notes at Tiffany's.⁴⁵ And when William Winter edited a biography of the famed actor, Brooks was asked to tell of Brougham's connection with the Lotos Club. It was “a labor of love,” as Brooks expressed it, but he cheerfully agreed to furnish a chapter for Winter's book.⁴⁶ In September⁴⁷ Brooks wrote the chapter “Brougham in His Club Life”⁴⁸ which the editor of The Critic termed “gentle and genial.”⁴⁹

When Brougham retired from office in 1878, Whitelaw Reid again became president of the Lotos Club and retained the office for the next ten years. During this time, the heir-apparent—Brooks—remained as first vice president and resigned about 1887. However, on March 22, 1890, when the Lotos Club celebrated its twentieth anniversary, Brooks returned from Newark, New Jersey, to attend the dinner meeting. The speaker of the evening was Robert G. Ingersoll, but the other members responded with speeches as various toasts were proposed. Brooks spoke for “The Press.”⁵⁰ Sometime after this, the club moved to “a handsome brownstone building” at Fifth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street.⁵¹ In 1909 the Lotos moved again, this time to 110 West Fifty-seventh, and today the famous club is found at 5 East Sixty-sixth where they continue to sponsor the arts and provide luxurious accommodations in their beautiful club house which was constructed in the French Renaissance style of architecture in 1900 at the expense of a daughter of William H. Vanderbilt.⁵²

The Century Association

In 1880 Brooks was elected to membership in the oldest and most distinguished club in New York: The Century Association, more commonly known as The Century Club. No “mere accidents of birth and fortune” could win a man admission to The Century; the standards of this club were based on “brains, culture, and achievement.” “Rising young men in letters, art, and the professions, who will grow up with the institution and reflect lustre on its annals” were the ones sought out for membership.⁵³

The Century was founded on January 13, 1847, and the membership was originally limited to 100, as the name indicates. When Brooks joined the Association, its quarters were at No. 109 East Fifteenth Street and the president was Daniel Huntington, who had been elected to office in 1879. Henry Codman Potter was elected to the presidency in 1895, and was still in office at Brooks's death in 1903. Brooks never held an important office in The Century, but it was one of the clubs in which he retained membership until his death. One does not lightly renounce his membership in this exclusive club. In 1899, however, he changed his membership from resident to non-resident because of his frequent travels while in retirement.54

While Brooks was a member, it was reported that The Century was “one of the very few clubs that are always full and always have from 150 to 200 applicants for admission.” Forty new members were all that could be elected in any one year. The initiation fee was $100 and the yearly dues were about $40. The regular dinner meetings were held on the first Saturday night of each month, and at these affairs there was “genuine intellectual companionship” with no speeches or formalities. In the club house, which had been built especially for The Century, there was usually an exhibition of paintings in the halls. The library and reading rooms were always open, and here the members dropped in to read or chat in the evening.⁵⁵

At the regular monthly meetings, or at “any event of more than ordinary interest,” Noah Brooks was sure to be present with such friends as Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard Henry Stoddard, E. L. Youmans, Horace White, Lawrence Barrett, Edwin Booth, and many others.⁵⁶ Raphael Pumpelly, a traveler, mining expert, and author who frequently visited the club, said that these men were “the brains of the metropolis” and among them his education was greatly broadened.⁵⁷ Another visitor to the club termed its members “the cleverest men of a nation whose chief characteristic is cleverness.”⁵⁸ George Augustus Sala remarked that at The Century he had met “literature, art, and science in combination with stewed oysters and hot ‘whiskey skins.’”⁵⁹ Brooks found a ready place among his fellow Centurions and quickly won recognition as “a good story teller.”⁶⁰ And Henry Holt recalled the club members singing the “Song of the Horse-Car Conductor,” which Brooks had helped to write, while Quincy “Mike” Ward did a jig in time to the music.⁶¹

In 1891 the Century Association moved to No. 7 West Forty-third Street, its present home. As Brooks's prestige in the club increased, he was able to obtain membership for friends of his, such as Charles de Kay, whom he proposed for election in 1896. Augustus St. Gaudens and Edmund Clarence Stedman, close friends of Brooks, seconded de Kay's nomination, and he was accepted into The Century.⁶² Brooks took a great interest in The Century's library, which contained 14,551 volumes at the time of his death, and frequently contributed books to it.⁶³ Other members also gave generously to the library.⁶⁴

When Brooks died, his fellow Centurions paid him a noble tribute. “He was a valuable newspaper man,” wrote the club historian, “widely informed, facile, often brilliant, with a trustworthy flair for that which interests the public,” and displayed a genial humor toward his friends whom he judged solely upon their individual merits. Brooks had brought honor to this club.65

The Authors Club

When Brooks arrived in New York, there was no author's club, although such an organization had previously existed for short periods of time. In April of 1837 an authors’ club had been started with Washington Irving serving as president; Fitz-Greene Halleck was vice president, and James Fenimore Cooper was one of its members.⁶⁶ But this club died out, and another, called the Broadway Literary Club, was organized during the Civil War.⁶⁷ It too was of short duration, but in 1882 Charles de Kay decided that New York needed an authors’ club where literary men could assemble in good fellowship and talk shop. Other writers agreed with him and promised to help organize a club.⁶⁸ On the evening of October 21, 1882, Noah Brooks, Edward Eggleston, Laurence Hutton, Charles de Kay, Brander Matthews, and Edmund Clarence Stedman met at the home of Richard Watson Gilder, No. 103 East Fifteenth Street, just a few steps from The Century Association. Gilder, a brother-in-law of de Kay, lived in a large picturesque residence which had formerly been a stable. These seven men organized the Authors Club and agreed to invite twenty-five other authors to membership. The following week the founders and charter members met at the home of Stedman and appointed a committee to draft a constitution. The work was largely done by Edward Eggleston, and on November 13 the group assembled at Laurence Hutton's home and adopted the constitution.⁶⁹

Immediately the organization was beset with discord since at least two of the members aspired to be first president. To avoid hard feelings, it was finally decided that there would be no president—only an executive council of nine to be elected each year. The council was to choose its own chairman for each meeting. One fourth of the members were to be out-of-town authors, and no woman writer was eligible since the men wished to smoke and feared that women might object to their pipes and punch. The entrance fee was established at $15; annual dues were $10. Since the club had no permanent quarters, the members agreed to hold their fortnightly meetings at their own homes.⁷⁰ When it came to selecting the official spelling of the club's name, the members decided that it should be written “Authors Club,” without an apostrophe. “No, gentle compositor,” cautioned one of the members, “do not put an apostrophe in that title; for the apostrophe is the sign of possession, and the sensation of possession is so rare among authors that they do not use its symbol in the name of their Club.”⁷¹ Once this spelling was termed a blunder,72 but de Kay sprang quickly to the defense and nothing more was ever heard of the matter.⁷³

FIGURE 4. Noah Brooks at the Authors Club, New York. From Harper's New Monthly Magazine 73 (October 1886), 812.

The first regular meeting of the Authors Club took place at Laurence Hutton's on November 28, 1882, and Henry M. Baird, Noah Brooks, Edward Eggleston, Edwin L. Godkin, Laurence Hutton, Charles de Kay, Charlton T. Lewis, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Richard Grant White were chosen as the executive council members for the first year. Brooks served on this governing body again in 1883, 1886, 1887, and 1891. In 1892 the term of office was extended to three years, and Brooks was again chosen to the council, but in 1895 he refused to take a seat because he was in retirement and found it difficult to be present at meetings. During his terms on the council, Brooks was frequently chosen chairman and presided at many of the meetings.⁷⁴

There were thirty-six members at the meeting of November 28, and the temporary limit was fixed at fifty. In addition to the seven founders and the members of the executive council, they were: H. M. Alden, W. L. Alden, John Bigelow, Vincenzo Botta, H. H. Boyesen, John Burroughs, S. S. Conant, George William Curtis, Henry Drisler, George C. Eggleston, Sydney Howard Gay, Parke Godwin, John Habberton, J. R. G. Hassard, Bronson Howard, Clarence King, Jonas M. Libbey, Hamilton W. Mabie, W. S. Mayo, George Edgar Montgomery, Frederick Law Olmstead, Raphael Pumpelly, Allen Thorndike Rice, Richard Henry Stoddard, and E. L. Youmans. With the support of these men, the club continued to grow and expand until London, England, took notice of the New York club and organized an author's club in 1892.75

The constitution of the Authors Club stated that “no person shall be eligible to membership who is not the author of a published book proper to literature, or who has not a recognized position in other kinds of distinctively literary work.” This qualification for membership was made broad enough to admit editors who had not written a book, and occasionally the bars were let down even further. William Carey was admitted to the club in 1887 on the basis of his sonnet to Beethoven,⁷⁶ and two years later one writer stated that the club had some members who, “though charming fellows, cannot be said to have a recognized position in distinctively literary work.”⁷⁷ But the Authors Club was meant to be “an informal, brotherly organization of literary men.” It excluded “from its rules and its practices everything that might impose restraint upon social liberty” because it was easier to welcome an interested person to membership than reject him.⁷⁸ And the club was noted for its freedom from quarrels and strife.⁷⁹ Its aims “are more social than literary, its design being to bring the older men in letters into more intimate relation and fellowship with the younger.”⁸⁰ The Authors Club, however, did have one goal which it pursued with firm determination: an international copyright law. When this law was finally placed on the statute books, one writer reported that “there is no doubt that the passage of the copyright law was due to the formation of the Authors’ Club, and this is, doubtless, only the first of a long series of important measures in behalf of literary workers that it will start and encourage.”⁸¹

Since the Authors Club had little money and wished to keep expenses to a minimum, its meetings “for the first year or two” were held “here and there, sometimes at the houses of different members and sometimes at restaurants.”⁸² At first the fortnightly meetings were held on Wednesday evening and were graced with punch, cigars, and pipes, but later the meetings were held on Thursday night. The club met only during the fall, winter, and spring months.⁸³ During February and March of each year, the club also held four afternoon receptions for the wives and daughters of the members; prominent women authors were also invited to these receptions.⁸⁴ The first guest to be entertained by the Authors Club was Matthew Arnold, who was given an informal reception to the Hotel Dam on February 28, 1884. Although the reception was scheduled for 8:30 P.M., few of the authors arrived until 9. At that time Charlton T. Lewis, the chairman for the evening, introduced Arnold, who spoke very briefly. James Herbert Morse noted in his diary that Arnold's face and head were “large but not out of proportion to the rest of him.” In honor of the event, Macmillan & Company presented to the Authors Club a nine-volume set of Arnold's works which became the nucleus of the club's library. At 11 Arnold left the party, but Brooks and many of the seventy-five writers present chatted until midnight.85

By the early months of 1884 the Authors Club was holding its meetings at the rooms of the Tile Club, organized by a small group of talented young painters, at 58½ West Tenth Street. To reach the Tile Club, one had to proceed “through a long, narrow, low-arched alley way leading between whitewashed walls, then through a slender backyard.” The rooms were furnished simply with two large tables and a number of chairs, but the walls were “prettily hung with pictures and other ornaments” which belonged to the Tile Club. The authors “arrived in goodly numbers about ten o'clock, and dropped off at twelve or later.” They chatted of their work while they drank punch, brandy, or whisky and smoked either clay pipes or cigars—all of which were furnished by their club.⁸⁶

Although the Tile Club members were hospitable, the Authors Club longed for its own rooms, and on May 29, 1884, they held their first meeting at their own quarters, located at 19 West Twenty-fourth Street. For $600 a year, the authors leased from the Fencing Club three rooms on the second floor where “the flow of literary conversation is occasionally interrupted by the sound of clashing arms, upborne from the floor beneath—the salle d'armes of the Fencing Club.” Frank Lathrop and Clarence Cook decorated and furnished the rooms with a few pictures and some rugs. The library, as yet, consisted only of Matthew Arnold's works, but “the elegant piece of furniture,” observed Morse, “is a long table of cherry wood on which our little supply of viands was set out.” Simple cane-seated chairs completed the furniture.⁸⁷ By 1886 the club rooms were adorned with a few engravings and half a dozen oil paintings, “loans only, for the Club is not a rich man's Paradise.” There was also “a bronze bas-relief of Bayard Taylor” and some casts of Greek sculpture. “For comfort,” Morse added, “we still keep the cane-seat arm-chairs, along with two or three corner benches.” “Pipes,” he said, “strew the mantel piece, and a punch bowl in a corner speaks of the Thursday night convivialities.” A large bookcase now held the works of the 150 members, and there were magazines and newspapers in the reading room.⁸⁸ In 1889 the library, rapidly growing, boasted several hundred volumes.

On every second Thursday, at about 10 P.M., from thirty to fifty authors gathered in the club rooms for a brief business session that was usually interrupted some thirty minutes later by the loud tones of an Oriental bronze gong which summoned the authors to a “good supper” prepared by a caterer and spiced with an “abundance of bottled beer and good punch.” Each member was entitled to bring one guest. With dinner over, the members gathered in small groups to smoke and talk.89 A typical coterie which usually gathered around one of the smoking tables consisted of O. B. Bunce, George C. Eggleston, Laurence Hutton, Noah Brooks, George Parsons Lathrop, and Robert Underwood Johnson. Brooks, with a twinkle in his eyes and smoking his favorite cigar, would relate countless tales to his companions while they puffed on their long-stemmed clay pipes and listened with interest to this fascinating conversationalist.⁹⁰ At council meetings, after the business discussion had ended, Brooks would also reminisce about Bret Harte or others until the little group finally adjourned to the Assassin's Den for a glass of beer before going home.⁹¹

Whenever a foreign writer of repute visited New York, he generally was invited to a reception at the Authors Club.⁹² J. M. W. van der Poorten Schwartz, who lived at Chateau de Zuylestein near Leersum, Holland, was given honorary membership.⁹³ The only woman to receive such an honor was Harriet Beecher Stowe.⁹⁴ At times the club gave receptions to publishers,⁹⁵ but generally they honored the contemporary idol of the literary field, often one of their own number. On April 22, 1886, William Dean Howells was given a reception which proved to be “by far the most interesting event in literary circles this winter.” The Fencing Club allowed the authors to use their large first-floor room where the table was set for more than a hundred. E. P. Roe arrived early, bringing with him a large box full of trailing arbutus which he and Hamilton Gibson distributed as boutonnieres to the members as they arrived. When Professor Boyesen appeared, he immediately “lighted a pipe of majestic proportions” which prompted the other authors to do likewise. When George Cary Eggleston, the chairman, arrived with Howells, they were greeted with much applause. Then all fell to talking and smoking until “the few chinks between the authors had been duly filled with blue smoke” at which time the gong sounded to announce the beginning of the meeting. A few speeches, each limited to two minutes, were made and then dinner was served. Mark Twain arrived late, but Morse gave him his chair which was opposite Howells. “When the eating was done,” Morse wrote, “we had speeches from the late comers, Mark Twain speaking twice in fact,” once for the publishers—when J. Henry Harper declined to respond to Eggleston's toast—and once for himself. It was a memorable event and brought together “a truly representative assemblage of American literarians.”⁹⁶

On February 18, 1887, the Authors Club was incorporated under the laws of New York State, with the certificate being signed by the nine trustees: Noah Brooks, George C. Eggleston, W. Hamilton Gibson, Ripley Hitchcock, Bronson Howard, Thomas W. Knox, James Herbert Morse, Edward Munroe Smith, and Alfred Butler Storey.97 After incorporation, the club continued to expand and in January of 1890 it was decided to raise the membership limit from 150 to 300.⁹⁸ Then in April Andrew Carnegie, a member of the club, offered the executive council $10,000 “for the encouragement of literature.” The council accepted the generous gift, but decided to invest the money and spend only the interest.⁹⁹ For one reason or another, the Authors Club found it necessary to move in 1892, and they selected temporary quarters at 158 West Twenty-third Street where they held their first meeting in December.¹⁰⁰ Many of the members desired to purchase a permanent club house, but some of the older men believed that “the popularity which the Club has enjoyed thus far has been due largely to the modest way in which it has been conducted.”¹⁰¹ The will of the younger men prevailed, however, and the club decided to raise the necessary funds for permanent quarters.

Rossiter Johnson, John D. Champlin, and George O. Eggleston suggested that the club publish a limited edition book,¹⁰² such as the one written by the Lotos Club in 1875. By April of 1892, plans for such a volume were completed, and Rossiter Johnson announced that the book would contain “stories, essays, poems, and sketches written specifically for it by members of the Club.” Only 251 copies—of which one was for the club's library—were to be published, and the price for this unique book was set at $100.¹⁰³ Slowly the manuscripts were assembled, sent to the De Vinne Press toward the end of 1892,¹⁰⁴ and finally appeared late in 1893 under the title of The First Book of the Authors Club: Liber Scriptorum. Over 100 authors contributed to it and each autographed all 251 copies. The paper, bearing the watermark of the Authors Club, was made in Holland, and the volumes were bound in leather, “tastefully stamped and tooled…with artistic luxuriousness.”¹⁰⁵ The sale of Liber Scriptorum brought the club a profit of over $20,000 which was used to buy “leather-covered morris chairs, soft rugs, handsome bookcases, and other luxuries” since the club had learned in the meantime that Andrew Carnegie contemplated giving them permanent quarters and they would not need to build a house.¹⁰⁶

For Liber Scriptorum Brooks wrote an autobiographical sketch about the books which he had read as a boy when there were few books written especially for children. Although Brooks himself was one of the writers who remedied this situation, he does not mention his own writings. He merely says that he is glad to have “lived long enough to see so vast a volume of valuable literature provided for our boys and girls.”¹⁰⁷

To celebrate its tenth birthday, the Authors Club held a banquet at the St. Denis Hotel on February 28, 1893. Brooks returned to New York for the gala occasion and sat at the main table with the other founders of the club. “The dinner,” said Morse, “was unusually brilliant, more good speakers than we could use.” After the brief addresses, everybody scurried about collecting autographs on the colorful menu which had been printed especially for the event. One writer observed that since the Authors Club had passed its first ten years, “there remains no doubt of its establishment as a permanent institution.”108

The cornerstone of the Carnegie Music Hall, at Seventh Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, was laid on May 30, 1890, and Carnegie built club rooms in this grand structure. When they were completed, Carnegie offered them free to the Authors Club. In February of 1894, a committee, consisting of Harry Marquand, John Champlin, and James Herbert Morse, was appointed to consider Carnegie's generous offer. At first the committee objected to accepting the quarters gratis, but after much discussion they agreed to accept the proposition.¹⁰⁹ In the meantime, the Authors Club held its meetings at the hall of the Architectural League while preparations were being made for the move into their new quarters¹¹⁰ where at last they had room for the library and mementos of the club. In grateful appreciation of Carnegie's generosity, the original manuscript of Liber Scriptorum was given to him.¹¹¹ Even for some time prior to their move into the Music Hall, however, the Authors Club had been “in a most flourishing condition,”¹¹² and the library had grown to “several thousand volumes.”¹¹³ In 1896 a prize of $100 was offered for the best bookplate design; George Wharton Edwards's drawing won and was immediately copyrighted by the club.¹¹⁴ Alexander Black, the literary editor and art critic of the Brooklyn Times, served as “honorary librarian” of the club's growing collection.¹¹⁵ Occasionally, the library was used by scholars for research, but the rest of the quarters were generally vacant except for the evenings of the fortnightly dinner meetings.¹¹⁶

At times the club gave dinners in its club rooms for some noted author, such as Stephen Crane who was feted by Ripley Hitchcock on March 7, 1896.¹¹⁷ But for the larger celebrations, when 150 or more writers and guests would assemble, the dinner meetings were held at hotels. Richard Henry Stoddard was given such a banquet at the Hotel Savoy on March 25, 1897.¹¹⁸ Stoddard's social interests were centered at the Century and Authors clubs, and before his death he gave the major portion of his private library to the Authors Club. After his death, the remainder of his books were presented to The Century Association.¹¹⁹ Not all the meetings of the club were social, however; whenever a good literary cause needed support, the authors were sure to note the matter and give it attention. When Emile Zola, the French novelist, sprang to the defense of Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely accused of treason by French military authorities, the Authors Club scheduled a meeting for March 10, 1898, to take action “in the cause of human liberty and constitutional justice.”120

Whenever Brooks was in the vicinity of New York, he worked actively with the Authors Club. In 1898 he was assigned to the committee in charge of amending the constitution,¹²¹ and he maintained his membership in the club until his death. In 1919 the Authors Club received $250,000 from the estate of Carnegie, and this large sum, when added to the $50,000 already in the club's treasury, made the Authors one of the richest organizations in New York.¹²² But as New Yorkers gradually lost their taste for clubs, the Authors Club too declined; at the time of this writing, the club has no permanent quarters and only an occasional meeting is held.

The New England Society

In addition to the Lotos, Century, and Authors clubs, Brooks also became a member of two other organizations while he lived in New York. On February 14, 1872, he was elected a member of the New York Chapter of the New England Society, and on July 13, 1883, he was chosen a corresponding member of the Maine Historical Society.¹²³ He took little part in the activities of the latter, but he participated quite actively in the New England Society, an organization which was founded on May 6, 1805, and whose object is to promote and study the history of New England. To be a member, one must be a native or descendant of a person born in the New England States. Brooks maintained his membership in the New York Chapter until the year of his death.¹²⁴ Whenever he was called up to serve on committees or make arrangements for meetings of the New England Society, he cheerfully responded. In 1882 he was named to the dinner committee for the annual meeting which was to be held on December 22, in commemoration of the Pilgrims’ landing, and since Brooklyn had just organized a chapter, Brooks was asked to secure prominent speakers before they could be contacted by Brooklyn. Accordingly, he wrote to Mark Twain in April:

Lotos Club,
147 Fifth Avenue.
April 27^th, 1882.

My dear Mark:

You will shortly receive from Judge Horace Russell a letter asking you to speak at the next New England dinner of the New York Society. We are early in the field, this year, as the Brooklyn chaps have organized a society of their own, and we want to corrall [sic] the best talent in the country before they get around. I am on the dinner committee, this year, and have taken the burden of lassoing several speakers. Judge Russell volunteered to write to you, and I agreed, in order to make things solid, to write an informal letter to let you know that one of the Fifty-niners125 who knows your real strength in eating and drinking is after you, too. You will have from this until December to get good and ready in, and so I hope you will say to Russell, when he writes you, that you are just dying to go it.

Faithfully yours,
Noah Brooks

S.L. Clemens, Esq.
Hartford, Conn.¹²⁶

Because of his long friendship with Brooks, Mark Twain agreed to speak at the New York meeting of the New England Society. When the seventy-seventh annual dinner was held at Delmonico's, Brooks was among the 230 members and guests who assembled for the celebration. Among the prominent speakers were Joseph H. Choate, Chauncey M. Depew, General U. S. Grant, and many others. Grant made a few brief remarks and then reported to the audience that “Mr. Twain says he will say what I was going to say.” A “great burst of laughter” ensued since Grant was to have spoken about the United States and Twain was scheduled to reply to the toast “Woman, God bless her!” Undaunted, Twain rose very deliberately, took his cigar from his mouth, and “dropped his eye-lids on his mischievously twinkling eyes.” Grant quickly turned his chair toward the speaker to see how Twain would proceed to bridge the gap which he had created. “With a funny nasal drawl and in a most deliberate manner,” Twain extricated himself by explaining that he esteemed “it a very great honor…to be deputed by General Grant to speak in honor of this great country.” Twain then gave the speech which he had prepared on women.

The New York Chapter had “a notable and brilliant” meeting, but the new Brooklyn Chapter, which held their first meeting on the same night, did not have one notable speaker at their table. Brooks and his associates had stolen the march on them by securing the available celebrities months ahead of the December 22 banquet.¹²⁷