"The Drones Club"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“The Drones Club”

March 7, 2021

 

“Even at the Drones Club, where the average of intellect is not high, it was often

said of Archibald that, had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been

hard put to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.”

                                                                                                                             P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

                                                                                                                             “The Reverent Wooing of Archibald”

                                                                                                                              Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929

 

One thing old people do is rummage through old letters, albums and photos, dreaming of a past, where memories are often an improvement on reality. The other day, I came across an album devoted to the Drones Club of New York and P.G. Wodehouse. It includes letters, news clippings, cards, etc. The oldest item is a December 27, 1981 article from the New York Times on Wodehouse, “A Hundred Years and a Hundred Books,” by Charles McGrath. The most recent a June 22, 2017 e-mail from Jane Duncan telling me of the death of Charles Gould in Kennebunkport, Maine, a great friend, world-renowned Wodehousian and fellow Drone. 

 

Wodehouse’s imagined Drones Club was set in London’s Mayfair district, in an eternal Edwardian England, where spring and summer were the only seasons, and where neither wars, nor plagues, nor financial crises ever intervened. Plum, as he was called, named the Club for the male honeybee whose sole function is to mate with a queen bee. They lounge about all day, feeding off nectar delivered by female workers, waiting for their bit of sex, after which they die – “and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,” as Helena says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Wodehouse’s Drones never age. They were as vacuous and as full of fun in the 1960s as they had been in the 1920s when they first appeared. Members included Bertie Wooster, Archibald Mulliner, Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, Freddie Widgeon, Pongo Twistleton, Bingo Little, Oofy Prosser and others.

 

In the Drones Club of New York, we feigned at being members of Wodehouse’s Club, but, in truth, we were working stiffs, full of fun, with no hint of aristocratic bearings. Every three or four weeks, for two hours – or maybe even three or four if the bar remained open and baskets of rolls for throwing were re-filled – we would mimic our favorite characters, quote favorite lines and laugh uproariously. Unlike the Mayfair Club, we integrated, as women’s fondness for Wodehouse equals men’s. In fact, my affection for the “Master” came from my mother and my maternal grandmother.

 

The Drones of New York started with two members, one of whom I knew as director of equity research at a New York insurance company. I was invited to join, along with a friend who was a Wodehouse aficionado. While we never pretended to be as exclusive as Max Beerbohm’s Duke of Dorset’s Oxford club, the Junta, that “holy of holies,” we did not want to be more than a dozen or so. I have a photograph of nine of us taken at New York’s Coffee House Club in the mid 1980s, eight men dressed in black tie, with our Queen bee elegantly outfitted in a black gown. Four of those in the photo are no longer with us, including Jerry Gold, our OM (oldest member, not in age, but in seniority). The title OM died with Jerry.

 

Our first dinners were in a private room at the University Club, where on one memorable occasion a roll bounced off the forehead of a waiter, as he entered the room carrying a loaded tray. A favorite moment was the heated exchange between an elderly member of the Club and two Dronish guests. The subject was hats. The two guests felt proper etiquette allowed for hats to be worn in the lobby of the Club. The elderly member disagreed. (Gentleman’s Gazettesides with the Drones, as a lobby is a public place.) At some point we migrated to the Coffee House Club, a hangout for writers, poets and playwrights on West 44^th Street. It was a cozy place, with the spirits of departed writers mingling with those dining and sluicing. The Drones once put on a skit, written by another now-departed Drone Ned Crabb, to a bemused, if not amused, audience. Ned, besides being Letters Editor at the Wall Street Journal, was the author of two novels, Ralph and Lightning Strikes. Again, we changed venues, this time to the Yale Club, where old Elis, when they see us coming, ask their waiters for a table change.

 

The initiation of new members was good fun. We would send the poor sap into the next room, leaving the door ajar so he or she could overhear our discussion. We would make unintelligible but notably negative comments about the person – florid ties, magenta socks, flashy waistcoats. Some of us would complain the prospective member was too friendly, others, not friendly enough. Then, after fifteen or so minutes of contemptuous commentary and personal insults, we would welcome the victim back into the room as a new member. In the case of two younger members, it took a couple of decades to reach full membership…in fact, they may still not have achieved full membership! 

 

Both Drones clubs are about the joy of companionship, of common interests. Ours is about being with people who share love and respect for the “Master,” P. G. Wodehouse. In this sensitive age, I acknowledge he is a dead, white, male. But the truth is we don’t care about his color or sex. We care about him because he made (and makes) us laugh, and because he could write dialogue like few others. However, like drones who have mated, time takes its toll.  As I leaf through the album, images appear, of fellow Drones. Besides the three mentioned above, we have lost two others. One is Jimmy Heineman, who has since joined Wodehouse, Charles, Jerry, Ned and other Drones, in their heavenly funhouse. Jimmy Heineman had the world’s largest private collection of Wodehouse – 6,300 items according to a June 14, 1998 article in The New York Times. On the centenary of Wodehouse’s birth – October 15, 1981 – the Morgan Library exhibited treasures from the Heineman collection. Jimmy had begun collecting Wodehouse in 1927 at age ten, when living in Brussels. When the Germans marched in, he and his family left. Four years later, as a soldier in the American army, he made his way back to his parent’s home. He found the house intact, the furniture and rugs in good shape, but his collection of Wodehouse was gone, so he had to start over. The other Drone we have lost is Owen Quattlebaum, who died too early of cancer in 2002. He had moved to Santa Fe a few years earlier for health reasons. I always loved the fact that on the famed British bookstore Heywood Hill’s mailing list his name appeared just above that of the Queen Mother (a Wodehouse fan). She also died in 2002, at age 101. On St. Peter’s list, I presume Quattlebaum still precedes Queen.

 

The death of our OM, Jerry Gold, in 2016 put a damper on our group. COVID-19 halted a planned dinner in New York in the spring of 2020. That plus the difficulty of getting older bodies into New York had meant fewer meetings of Drones. But now, with vaccinations coming, it is time for another dinner, even if we have to come in cami-knickers. God knows, we all could do with a good laugh. 

 

We all belong to groups, from country clubs to eleemosynary institutions. Most have purposes – from providing a venue for golf to helping the disadvantaged. The Drones of New York served no purpose, other than contributing to the joy of its members. But that was (and is) enough. Laughter, it is said, is good for one’s health. It tosses one’s innards around. We should look for humor wherever we can. I was fortunate to find the Drones forty years ago. It brought friends and served up cherished memories – memories that cannot improve on reality.