Of the origins and purpose of the Club

I think from the start it must be made clear that this is a Gentleman's Club and the most ungentlemanly thing would be to ask another gentleman, if he was a gentleman.

 Stirchley must shoulder his share for what follows and he knows why. It had been my custom to spend much of the summer months in the Club’s library. The first reason is that is one of the quieter quarters of the establishment. Stirchley, the librarian, like many of his kind, had taken a vow of silence on behalf of others, if not himself and had perfected a stare which had reduced many a borrower to a quivering mass of uncertainty, such that he found instead of back copies of Sporting Life, they had withdrawn a small booklet on the culinary habits of the peoples of West Berkshire.

As an archivist Stirchley was first class but did tend to feel that the words on the page were worn out by casual looking and so discouraged researchers through the usual practice of unusual opening hours and inexplicable changes to the said without notice. This makes the library an excellent place for a snooze. The other reason for my choice was that it was the one place you can get a half way decent wireless reception for the cricket. If you have never combined the two activities I heartily recommend them as nothing is quiet so splendid as drifting in and out of consciousness to the sweet words of explanation of a cover drive well exercised, especially if a thunderstorm is rumbling around the Thames Valley at the same time as it adds depth and crackle to the proceedings.

The Library was closed! For reasons known only to the club’s legal chaps the whole of the floor on which it stood had been reclassified as being part of the Sovereign Territory of the Principality of Andorra . Stirchley had thrown himself into this by swearing loyalty to the Bishop of Urgell; putting the Library on a war footing with the Kaiser’s Germany and closing the premises to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Meritxell. Through the medium of Catalan, the only language he was prepared to communicate in, he intimated that, as I could no longer lodge myself amid the stacks I might divert myself among my papers on matters pertaining to the club and try to explain why it all seemed such a good idea at the time. 

The origins of Harington’s are obscured accidents of history and a greater commitment to the art of myth making than of decent administration. A major cause of this unfortunate lack of clarity is chiefly due to the club records going up in smoke in September 1666. One of the few surviving documents was a page from the Wagers Book which records ‘Rochester knows a wheeze involving a lot of flour dust and an enclosed space,’ but alas, nothing of real substance survived in the form of paper work, or indeed timber constructions..

It is generally thought that the club came into existence in the late Elizabethan period. Before that London was really no more than an overgrown market town; possibly with slightly more bishops and heads on spikes than Chipping Norton, but generally of the same kidney. The establishment of the City as an international trading entrepot of an up and coming world empire, along with the development of the court and such like suddenly meant wives insisted on visiting the blasted place. Long suffering husbands were now to be dragged up to ‘the smoke’ for the endless fitting of a new ruffs and trunk hose or asked tricky questions such as ‘does this new farthingale make my fundament look too small?’ the answer is never what you would expect. There is only so much of this sort of thing a man can take before he cracks. Harington’s was established as a haven; a place where members could escape from that whole need to be sociable or to feign interest in domestic crockery.

A counter theory, supported and promoted by Mrs The Hon Sec, is that the place functions in the manner of Ball Pools at shopping centres.  As it is not decent to employ a nanny to look after a husband, wives may deposit their spouse at the Club knowing they will get up to limited mischief while the real matters of import are dealt with.  She may have a point, although less face painting goes on here than you may imagine.

The Club has expanded over the years, occasionally buying up neighbouring properties when the present cheese pantry seemed a little of the small side or building extra stories to accommodate the growing membership’s need to have a quiet corner away from it all. In all those years gentlemen of character has escaped to this refuge which, if it could ever find it in itself to have a motto would be ‘don’t make a fuss.’ Admittedly, in the early eighteenth century, by one of those accidents of drafting all to common after lunch, Harington’s did find itself at war with a major European Power and consequently in possession of its own colonial holding– to wit, a small Pacific Island, by accident of the subsequent peace treaty, but generally it has shriven to avoid the attention of the wider public in general and salesmen of patent energy saving devices in particular.