I must say, at the risk of exposing some sort of reactionary longing for the past, I truly do regret being born too late to enjoy old-style Gentlemens’ Clubs and Smoking Rooms. The whole bourgeois idea is very attractive to me and I wonder where they all went nowadays. Whatever happened to the Liberal Club and the Reform Club, I wonder? Not that my politics are particularly fond of either one of those words.
I find the notion of the old early 20th Century Gentlemens’ Clubs appealing. The idea of sitting around in a warmly-colored room dressed in a fancy smoking jacket, surrounded by fancy leather furniture, a full bar, poker playing and other men discussing economics and politics while smoking cigars and sipping brandy gives me a wonderful Victorian vibe. Imagine if I managed to start up a Communist Club with leather-bound works of Lenin and Stalin on the cherry-stained oak shelves. Imagine what stories could be told in places such as that that couldn’t be told in your average pub, not to mention we would have a fireplace and compare facial hair.
I propose starting up a new Communist Gentlemens’ Club. It will serve food, brandy, cigars and have all-leather furniture with a healthily-colored portrait of Lenin above the fire. It will be called “Gentlemen of the Red Flag.”
What do you say, chaps? Break out the humidors and let’s get it started!
