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The Lotos Club
It was written then: “The aim of the club [was] to promote social intercourse among journalists, literary men, artists, members of the musical and dramatic professions, and such merchants and professional gentlemen of artistic tastes and inclinations....There was a provision in the con- stitution which required that at least one half of the members should be journalists, literary men, artists, actors and musicians, and this provision was jealously guarded.”
At rst, it was proposed to name the new club Melolotos, but that seemed to relate too singularly to music and it was agreed to call it The Lotos Club. This, it was felt, conveyed “an idea of rest and harmony and gained something of charm from [Alfred] Tennyson’s poem “The Lotos Eaters,” which was then in the full bloom of popularity. Two lines of this poem,
In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon,
were selected as the motto of the club.”
Journalist De Witt Van Buren was chosen as the rst president. The initiation fee was $20 for the rst hundred members and then $50, and annual dues were $40. The Directory rented for $2,800 a year the Club’s rst home, a brownstone building at 2 Irving Place, o Fourteenth Street and next to
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