The goddess admits those who are worthy
Among the grey stone façades on Pall Mall and St James’s Street, the district of gentlemen’s clubs, one club stands out from the others thanks to its bright, cream-coloured paint, a replica of the Parthenon frieze in white on a blue background and a brilliantly gilded female figure, the goddess Athene, who stands above the Doric columns of the entrance with her helmet and spear. Her gaze lowered and left arm outstretched, she seems to be inviting deserving mortals into the club.
In 1824 the writer John Wilson Croker, the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence and other eminent men founded the Athenaeum Club, intending it to be a meeting place for outstanding persons in the fields of science, art and literature. Whereas other clubs appealed to army officers, politicians, travellers or gamblers and drinkers, the Athenaeum was a refuge for intellectuals. The decision to spend money on the expensive Parthenon frieze instead of facilities to cool members’ drinks underlined its aspirations, as a satirical verse recorded: »I’m John Wilson Croker, I do as I please; instead of an ice house I give you – a frieze!« The members have included Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, J. M. W. Turner, Charles Darwin and, to date, 52 Nobel Prize laureates. The scientist Michael Faraday, whose wheelchair has been preserved in the club, ensured that the rooms had electric lighting as early as 1886. At the foot of the wide staircase Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, the latter mortally ill, were reconciled in 1863 after a quarrel that had lasted for years.
Info
Address 107 Pall Mall, SW1Y 5ER | Public Transport Piccadilly Circus (Bakerloo, Piccadilly Line) | Hours Unless you can get a member to invite you, forget it! | Tip Many clubs prefer not to be identified by a sign on the door. On a walk along Pall Mall, look out for the Travellers Club at 104 Pall Mall; the Reform Club, no. 106; the Army and Navy Club, no. 36; and the Oxford and Cambridge Club, no. 71.
Today government ministers, high-ranking civil servants and bishops are among the members. Women were not admitted until 2002, but now they too can dine and stay overnight in the club, read the 80,000 volumes in the imposing library, invite guests to private occasions, or simply snooze behind a newspaper in a leather armchair beneath the heavily framed portraits in the Morning Room.
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