"The Members Of The Lotos Club 1870 Through 2007" 2008
$350
[195] pp.
The Lotos Club
2008
9 1/4" x 6 1/4"
VG
*bump to head of cloth spine*
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Lists members and anecdotes of The Lotos Club over 137 years, along with bw images of many members and color plates of some of the artwork owned by the club. The Lotos Club, one of the oldest literary clubs in the United States, was founded on March 15, 1870, by a group of young writers, journalists and critics. Their idea was that The Lotos Club should be different – more inclusive, more comfortable, more active and more enjoyable – than other clubs available in New York City at that time. This is a philosophy that has guided Lotos ever since. To convey the idea of “rest and harmony,” the Club took its name from “The Lotos Eaters” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Mark Twain, a lifelong member and frequent guest, called Lotos “The Ace of Clubs.” Lotos’ first president, New York Leader editor DeWitt Van Buren, died after only a few months in office, and its second, New York City Mayor A. Oakey Hall, was indicted along with Boss Tweed. New York Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid was elected president in 1872, and made Lotos a success. He inaugurated Ladies’ Days – then a rarity among New York clubs – and started the hospitable tradition of hosting lavish dinners for distinguished figures from all walks of life. These celebrations, now called State Dinners, have been held for W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Enrico Caruso, George M. Cohan, Amelia Earhart, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Robert Moses, Harry S. Truman, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Frost, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Beverly Sills, Margaret Mead, Linus Pauling, Saul Bellow, Joe DiMaggio, Roy Lichtenstein, Arthur Miller, Dave Brubeck, Angela Lansbury and more than a dozen New York City mayors and many other men and women of achievement. The club originally was a men’s club, but Lotos began its second century with a unanimous vote in May 1977 to extend membership to women. In 2010, it elected its first female president. Lotos has reason to be proud of its past and faces the future with vitality and creativity. In a world of swift and unsettling change, The Lotos Club hopes to remain a small, treasured isle of tranquility and civility. - from the Lotos Club web site. With some wonderful humor!
The Lotos Club is a private social club in New York City. Founded primarily by a young group of writers and critics in 1870 as a gentlemen's club, it has since begun accepting women as members. Mark Twain, an early member, called it the "Ace of Clubs". The Club took its name from the poem "The Lotos-Eaters" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which was then very popular. Lotos was thought to convey an idea of rest and harmony. Two lines from the poem were selected for the Club motto:
In the afternoon they came unto a land in which it seemed always afternoon
The Lotos Club has always had a literary and artistic bent, with the result that it has accumulated a noted collection of American paintings. Its "State Dinners" (1893 menu at right below) are legendary fetes for scholars, artists and sculptors, collectors and connoisseurs, writers and journalists, and politicians and diplomats. Elaborate souvenir menus are produced for these dinners.