Please do not quote without permission. Author Contact: Charles L. Newhall, CLNewhall@gmail.com. (c) The Whiting Club & Charles L. Newhall, 2021
For citation: Newhall, Charles L. A Loose Sally of the Mind: History of The Whiting Club. Salem, MA: The Whiting Club, 2020.
A Loose Sally of the Mind: History of The Whiting Club
“For the purpose of general culture and congenial fellowship”
J’accuse! Mac Griffin presents an essay in which he recounts being accused of being a spy while an undergraduate at Harvard. Light! More Light! Engineer Elihu Thompson delivers an essay in which he reveals the mysteries of alternating current. Salvatore Ferragamo heels and Bruno Magli flats! Paul Lessard walks his listeners into Italian women’s shoes. U-boats strike off Marblehead! Don Macauley recounts the North Atlantic of 1939-40. Bricks! Lou Sirianni builds an architect’s appreciation of a raw material in an essay. All of these were essays given at the Whiting Club. The consummate 18th century intellect Samuel Johnson defined the essay as “A loose sally of the mind; an irregular undigested piece; not a regularly and orderly composition; or a trial, or experiment.”[1] E. B. White, who cited Johnson, defined the essayist this way:
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new “attempt,” differs from the last and take him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and stamina to write essays.[2]
This, in short, is what motivates the members of the Whiting Club: an autodidactic drive to understand the world and one’s experiences of it.
What inspires association? Why, for example, would a person venture out eight Monday evenings a year to listen to some neighbor pontificate? Further, why spend countless hours worrying about and finally preparing—perhaps in the last few days or hours—an extended essay every third year for no graduate credit or career advancement?
The Whiting Club may appear to be idiosyncratic; however, its establishment and development fits well into a wider cultural history and into a theme of autodidacticism. In recent years, historians have become interested in the power of culture and the institutions and personalities which shape it. Called “associations”—clubs, literary societies, and other self-improvement collectives—are core to the development of civil society. This essay seeks to shine some insight into how the Whiting Club might be situated within this cultural history as well as some interesting facets and characters who shaped its traditions and legacy.
A History of Clubs from Great Britain to the North Shore
CLUB. n. 4. An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.[3]
British historian Peter Clark, in his British Clubs and Societies, 1580-1800: The Origins of an Associational World, provides the wider context for the germinal seed of clubs in general. Quoting John Macky from Fog’s Weekly Journal of 2 May 1730, Clark tells us that “Already in the 1720s John Macky could speak of London having ‘an infinity of clubs or societies for the improvement of learning and keeping good humour and mirth’, while a decade later another writer exclaimed ‘what numbers of these sociable assemblies are subsisting in this metropolis! In the country not a town or village is without its club.’ [C]lubs and societies became one of the most distinctive social and cultural institutions of Georgian Britain.”[4] In the medieval era, religious societies fulfilled the function of association. In the early modern era and with the rise of political parties and bourgeoisie, voluntary associations became a vital part of civic life. The emergence of what historian David Shields has called “cosmopolitan learned culture,” led to new institutions and new models of discourse to take shape.[5] Men and women gathered in conventicles—or private Christian meetings. Primarily men gathered in taverns and coffeehouses. Clubs and societies developed around politics. The Whig Kit-Cat Club, organized in 1699, was the essential gathering point for parliamentarian Whigs until it was surpassed by the Hanover Club and later the King’s Head Club. Jonathan Swift’s Scriblerians was an early literary club. Its goals were deep friendship among “like-minded wits.” In London in the 18th century, men formed associations to discuss and debate current affairs such as the boldly named association “The Club.” This self-conscious group’s history was well documented by James Boswell in his gossipy Life of Johnson. Music, science, moral reform, bell-ringing, hunting, Roman and Egyptian historical revivalism, cock-fighting, bowling, books and libraries, horticultural, and temperance were just a few of the reasons the British formed associations. Pointing to their emergence after the English Civil Wars and rapid growth after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Clark estimates that an astounding number of close to 25,000 clubs and societies existed in the 18th century British world.
In the British North American colonies, men of letters and laws struggled to keep themselves abreast of cosmopolitan London thinking. Far from the metropolis and feeling provincial, colonials formed clubs to keep themselves intellectually active as well as socially engaged. One of the most renowned was Annapolis’ Tuesday Club, which was founded in 1745 by Dr. Alexander Hamilton, who dubbed himself the “Loquacious Scribble, Esq.” His club of 15 men was one of literary wit. In his record of the first eleven years of the club, Hamilton wrote: “Human wit…is an active and restless principle, it can never be kept quiet or still, but will always be nibbling…What then must take place for this disclaiming humor, now ceased among the members of this ancient and honourable Club [the club was but a year old at this time] for, it cannot be supposed, that their wit can lie fallow or Idle no, it must have something to nibble at, or a crust to chew, and accordingly we find the humor of Epistolary writing take place among the members of the Club.”[6] Thus, the Tuesday Club began the practice of delivering essays, a custom core to the Whiting Club. Other clubs emerged in British America, including several which Benjamin Franklin promoted, including his Junto at which Philadelphia tradesmen sought to better themselves. Fashioned as places for autodidacts to gather and learn from each other, the essence of these self-improvement clubs was learning in community.
Boston literary and intellectual associations took their roots from the social libraries such as the Anthology Society which became the Boston Athenaeum in 1807. Across antebellum New England the Lyceum movement drove intellectual engagement. Boston had the Long Room Club in the 18th century, and in the 19th century a number of “evening clubs” emerged. After the Civil War, the proliferation of clubs accelerated and associations experienced a renaissance or golden age. The quaint Club of Odd Volumes, though technically a book collectors’ club, was (and is) essentially an essay club.[7] St. Botolph was (and is) a Boston club of writers, artists and intellectuals, and the Tavern Club has a similar membership with a bit more of theatrical bent. Today all three have their own clubhouses and active memberships. Shields writes: “Clubbing became immensely popular during the course of the nineteenth century, practiced by all classes and ethnic groups except native Americans. It ceased to be practiced exclusively by men; indeed, by 1910, women’s clubs might have eclipsed men’s clubs in numbers—this despite the exponential growth of clubbing among men.”[8] The intellectual origins of the Whiting Club lie in this history.
The earliest men’s club on the North Shore was the Civil Society, formed in Salem in February 1744/5. The group met regularly and held, in its constitution, that “if any member swears, or Curses, he shall pay for every such offense one shilling old Tenor towards the Reckoning”, likewise for those who quarrel or “gives another the Lye”.[9] No records for this group exist for dates after 1750, but that year witnessed the founding of another Salem club, this one of particular prominence, for its members were the most respected gentlemen in town. It may have been called the Monday Evening Club or perhaps—like its London counterpart—just the Club. The group formed together to discuss, according to James Duncan Phillips, “literary and philosophical subjects.”[10] Members included: “Benjamin Lynde and Nathaniel Ropes, both members of the Supreme Court of the colony, William Browne, judge of the Superior Court, Andrew Oliver, judge of the Court of Common Pleas, the Reverend William McGilchrist, rector of Saint Peter’s Church, the Reverend Thomas Barnard of the First Church, and Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, whose long life of serve as a physician had made his name famous in Salem.”[11] It was out of this association that the Social Library emerged in 1760. Wanting to acquire the most influential books of the time and by pooling their resources, they established a collective library by subscription in March. During the American Revolution, an overlapping group purchased the scientific library books of Dr. Kirwan captured by a Beverly privateer and set up the Philosophical Library (1781). These two merged in 1810 to form was the genesis of a recent favorite haunt of the Whiting Club: the Salem Athenaeum.
The Salem or “Putnam” Club was an associational fixture in North Shore society. Founded in 1916, it followed the “evening essay club” format though the formal structure of the Club was loose. Writing in 1941, Alfred W. Putnam declared “a benevolent dictator elects and retires all members and elects himself to all offices. He assigns all duties to members and none hardy enough to balk have yet to be found. When he wishes [for] money, members are ordered to form in line and file by depositing the necessary sums. There are no accounts and no questions are answered with regard to use of funds. The privileges of members are to cry ‘Heil Hitler’ and do as they are told when they are told.” The Whiting Club twice entertained the members of the Putnam Club at our meeting. Describing one of those evenings, Putnam writes: “Twice we have been invited by the Whiting Club of Lynn to Dr. Cobb’s house in Lynnfield. That is a Club similar to ours, but much more highly organized. They have such things as bylaws, officers, and elections: details which we do not aspire to. We did once undertake electing members by ballot. The result was shocking and appalling.”[12] Sadly, the Putnam Club no longer exists. However, still very much active today, too, is the Salem dinner and lecture club, the Thirteen. Born out of a national movement in the late 19th century, the idea of the Thirteen was and remains to host a dinner with that number of members and one guest, fourteen being the ideal number around the table. They have no official constitution or bylaws and always select the most recent member to assume the presidency.
Lynn, too, has had many associations. At the Lynn Museum, there are records of the Harvard Laughing Club (1792), Lynn Female Benevolent Society (1814-1914), the Lynn Female Fragment Society (1820-1880), the Lynn Lyceum (1828-1834), the Lyceum of the Town of Lynn (1840-1874), the Exploring Circle (founded in 1850 for the “self-education” of 20 members who read papers on natural science), a Reading Club (1864-1980), Lynn Women’s Club (founded in 1878 by Sarah E. Starr and so popular that it expanded from 65 to 100 member limit quickly and then spawned the North Shore Club for women unable to get into the Lynn Women’s Club), the Oxford Club (1880, perhaps the most prominent men’s social club in Lynn), the Political Science Club (1912), the Maine Club of Lynn (for those born or who had lived in Maine), the Tavern Players (1933, a home stage directed by Marion Benvie), and, of course, the Whiting Club (1903).
Whiting Club’s Founding Times
ERA. n. From the blessings they bestow,
Our times are dated, our eras move:
They govern and enlighten all below,
As thou do’st all above.[13]
The first meeting of the Whiting Club was hosted by Episcopalian Reverend Augustine H. Amory on May 26, 1903. Having moved from Lawrence, Massachusetts to Lynn in the first years of the 20th century, Amory brought with him a keen intellect and a desire to gather with other educated men to share ideas and to learn. In Lawrence, the minister had been a member of the Lawrence Monday Evening Club. That group in turn owed its genesis to the Haverhill Monday Evening Club, founded in 1860. Gathering in the Rectory of St. Stephens in May 1903, the topic was organizing a similar club in Lynn.[14] There they determined “to meet informally during the winter season.”[15]
In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt—who had assumed the presidency upon the assassination of William McKinley just three years prior—was President of the United States. A progressive Republican, Roosevelt was both a “new imperialist” with a big stick and an executive reformer who codified environmentalism and demanded pure food and drug inspection for the common good. The average life expectancy in the United States was 47. Only 14 percent of American homes had bathtubs, and just eight percent had telephones, with a three-minute call from Denver to New York City costing eleven dollars. Two books published that year would become monumental: W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. The following year Ida Tarbell would publish the muckraking The History of Standard Oil. There were 45 states in the Union and only 15 Amendments to the Constitution. There was no federal income tax. Plessy vs. Ferguson, the landmark Supreme Court decision which legalized “separate, but equal” facilities for whites and blacks (segregation) was less than 10 years on the legal books. It was in 1903 that the Martha Washington Hotel opened in New York City, the first women-only hotel. That year Ford Motor Company was incorporated and Prussia was the first place to require driver’s licenses. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 miles per hour. As every schoolchild knows, in December the Wright brothers flew on the beach in the Outer Banks. It was the year of the first “world” series and the Red Sox won. The average wage of a United States worker was 22 cents per hour. Most women washed their hair once a month, using borax or egg yolks for shampoo. It was in this era that the Whiting Club was established.
Benjamin Newhall Johnson, a founding member, recalled that early history in an essay entitled “The Whiting Club, 1903-1931—and after.”[16] In it he wrote, “Every institution is the lengthening shadow of some one or more of its members.” How true, indeed! Here is Johnson on the purpose of the essay club:
It was De Senancour, I believe, who said that ‘in the world a man lives in his own age; in the solitude of books he lives in all the ages’. And it is right here that the real purposes and program of The Whiting Club begins. Reading is not enough for the culture of men. Reading alone makes men one-sided, the victims of fixed ideas. Solitary meditation involves the same danger. A full mind must find congenial intercourse. It is one of man’s best teachers. Conversation is as necessary to culture as is reading and reflection…Let us read and talk by all means and that our talk may be true recreation let us talk with congenial spirits. It has been well said that ‘such spirits may be met with singly in the ordinary intercourse of life, but the full play of the mind demands that they should be encountered not in singles but in battalions; and hence the necessities of clubs to bring together like steel filings out of sand at the approach of the magnet men of the most opposite pursuits and tastes, the attrition of whose minds may brush away their rust and cobwebs and give them edge and polish’…But, even so, reading followed by talking is not enough. Let Lord Bacon’s wisdom govern you: ‘Reading maketh a full man. Conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.’ Without now and then taking one’s pen in hand, no man can thoroughly know, with all the reading and talking in the world, how far he may have strayed from the straight and narrow way of exact truth and correct process of thought. The provision in our Constitution and By-Laws that members shall write and read papers at our meetings was thus founded on the soundest principle.
The Club functions as a continuation of a liberal arts education. Formal education is just a start, a training in ways of thinking. The educated person understands just how little he or she truly knows. In our professions, we endeavor to make a difference applying our knowledge and working toward a civic good. Yet, we continue to be curious and to self-educate far beyond our fields. The thinking person is one who is able to learn and teach others. Writing and delivering a formal essay—whether literary, historical, scientific, political, personal, etc.—is an exercise in the most essential of human skills, intelligent communication toward greater understanding and, perhaps, civic virtue. While we read alone, we write thinking of our audience. Delivering an essay makes the intellectual act essentially social.
Evening clubs proliferated in the late 19th and early 20th century with self-improvement as the central aim. These associations provided the rising middling class—or “middlebrow”—with the opportunity to socialize and continue their education with folks of the same class, and most importantly, “influential” people in their towns and cities. Boston had Wednesday and Thursday Evening Clubs, as well as a Saturday Club.[17] According to French’s history, it was James R. Nichols who organized the Haverhill Evening Club to be comprised of a “select 25 gentlemen of fair culture and intelligence.”[18] That Club excluded politics and theology from available essay topics, and began a practice that has been used now and again at the Whiting Club: that of giving each member an opportunity to share a cultural insight or open a cultural discussion, followed by an original essay given by a member. French quoted Nichols’ history of the Haverhill club: “Its work has stimulated inquiry, created a taste for reading and for research in directions which would never have been known but for information imparted in club meetings. Many of its members not accustomed to place their thoughts in paper in the form of extended essays, not accustomed to search for and read rare and important books, find that new tastes have been acquired, new sources of knowledge opened, and new capabilities awakened.”[19]The Monday Evening Club of Lawrence, which began in 1871, followed the same format at its parent in Haverhill. Amory had been a member while serving a minister of Grace Church in Lawrence and brought that structure to Lynn.
The second meeting of the Whiting Club was not until November 9, 1903, hosted by Henry F. Tapley at his home at 8 p.m. and the topic was the Club’s constitution. A slightly different group appeared, including Professor Elihu Thomson, the key engineer founding what is now General Electric. There they stated the purpose: “This association formed for the purpose of general culture and congenial fellowship shall be known as The Whiting Club in memory of the Reverend Samuel Whiting, a learned minister of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, who gave to Lynn its present name.”[20]
Samuel Whiting was born on November 20, 1597 in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. He graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge and later emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1636. Once in Saugus, Whiting suggested the name “Lynn”—in remembrance of King’s Lynn in East Anglia—for the growing town, giving Lynn its name. Whiting served as an Overseer of Harvard College, as did many community ministers, and was a highly respected intellect among the Puritan elect. He died in Lynn in 1679. In 1907, Frederic J. Whiting of Cambridge, a lineal descendent of Reverend Whiting, was a guest of the Club, and other descendants have been members including this author.
Membership has always been limited to 35 and was originally confined to “those living within five miles of Lynn City Hall.”[21] Fees were set at $2.00 per member for an admission fee and meetings were set on the second Monday of each month. A bylaw stating that “meetings shall be preferably held at the houses of members”[22] was proposed, but rejected. Even so, most meetings were held in private residences at least through the 20th century. There were simply two officers: a chairman and a secretary-treasurer.
Essays
“The essay must be pure – pure like water or pure like wine,
but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.” Virginia Woolf
The core of the Whiting Club meetings are the essays written and delivered by members. In 1912, the Club published the Constitution and Bylaws of the Club.
“The spirit of cooperation continues to be the policy of the Club as an organization for self-improvement which must come from each member, for any lapsing from this course could not fail to lead to any other result than degeneration into a mere source of entertainment.” Thus, essays have always been tied to that Franklinian value of self-improvement. Topics of essays presented cover the gamut; however, there are several fields which seem to be favorites. These include history, particularly local history; history of technology; scientific and naturalist expositions; technological descriptions; travelogues; current affairs from the local to the international; professional industry updates; religious history; and, of course, literary essays.
The first essay given before the Club was delivered by John Woodbury, Secretary of the Metropolitan Park Commission, on the topic of the Metropolitan Park System. Other early essays were given on the telephone system (with stereopticon views) by C.J.H. Woodbury, on radiant matter (with experiments) by Elihu Thomson, the political aspects of the Louisiana Purchase by Albion Hale Brainard, Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee Institute by George H. Martin. At the 8th meeting, Dr. Chauncey Sheldon read a paper on the Reverend Samuel Whiting. This was May 16, 1904, and the talk was followed by discussion, then three violin selections played by Frederick Plummer of Auburndale with Franklin Burnam on piano: the first musicale.
In 1906-07 there were essays on private libraries, illumination, early illustration of newspapers, layman’s concerns, and reproduction and growth in microscopic plants. On February 12, 1906 Luther Atwood gave an essay entitled “Climatic Changes and their Causes.” Elihu Thomson, the noted inventor and founder of what is now General Electric, and a longtime member of the Whiting Club gave his first essay on West Indies and Panama Canal, with lantern slides. Dr. Moses Greeley Parker, a guest, offered to give an exhibition of hypnotism. In 1907-08 essays were presented on the romance of coal hod, leaves from a yachtsman’s log, concrete and its uses, banks and bankers of old Lynn, and metropolitan development.
In the 1929-1930 season, the average attendance was 22 and essays included essays Charles H. Bangs, “The Puritan and the American Revolution,” Frank Cox, “Underemployment and the Older Workers,” Dr. Carolus Cobb, “The Common Cold,” Dr. Nathaniel P. Breed, “You Are What You Are: the Body,” Charles A. Collins, “The Stock Market Panic of 1929,” and Louis M. Atherton, “The New England Railroads.” Ladies’ Night that year included guest speaker Chester Scott Howland of New Bedford on “The Voyages of the Early Whalemen” and the season included a special dinner at the home of member Albert Morton Creighton on Little’s Point in Swampscott. This was a relatively typical year.
Some topics repeat themselves. For example, April 25, 1927, “Salem Club” was invited to join for a meeting. They accept. Salem member Stephen W. Phillips spoke on Captain Cook and Hawaii, a topic taken up again by T. McLean “Mac” Griffin in the early 21st century. The invention and technology of the telephone was the topic of several essays in the early years, including one be C. J. H. Woodbury, and most recently by AT&T executive and member Bruce Harriman. Military history, particularly naval history, has been a popular subject. Andy Skinner, a career naval architect and C. I. A. expert on Soviet-era submarines delivered a fascinating essay on how the U. S. government tracked Russian submarines. Frank Healey delivered a spirited and well-researched essay on the Battle of Chelsea Creek, a lesser known event of the American Revolution. In recent years, Donald Macauley wrote and presented essays on various aspects of the U. S. Navy, particularly focused on World War II including one on the Battle for the Atlantic and German attacks on American vessels before Pearl Harbor. Speaking of vessels, Darrow Lebovici’s essay on the Concordia Yawls was a terrific inside look from an owner-steward’s point of view. Art history has been a popular essay topic over the years and recent highlights include David O. Decker’s essay on the Canadian Group of Seven and J. D. Scrimgeour’s essay on Thomas Cole’s paintings The Course of Empire. Other recurrent subjects have included politics, philosophy, architecture, literature, fashion, and science.
Whiting Club Traditions
TRADITON. n. The act or practice of delivering accounts from mouth to mouth without
written memorials; communicating from age to age.[23]
Associations of all kinds thrive on traditions and customs and, though they change over time, their purposes remain to give order and familiarity to the group. The Whiting Club has adapted a format and protocols that have served the Club well for over a century. From the start, meetings have been held at a member’s house and now more often at local institutions such as the Eastern Yacht Club, the Salem Athenaeum, the Marblehead Museum, churches such as St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s in Marblehead and the First Church in Salem. For decades, the host was different from the essayist, giving the speaker time to focus on his intellectual work and the host space to set up and serve refreshments and desserts. Meetings have been almost always in the evening, beginning between 6 and 8 p.m. The format has varied, but is usually centered around the reading of a member’s essay, with a formal Club meeting, time to share cultural works and observations, and time for socializing over refreshments, ranging from informal cocktails and hors d’oeuvres to cider and desserts.
The Club met each November, December, January, February, March, April, and May since 1904, except December was been dropped for a formal essay meeting and September and October added as meeting months. A December Chairman’s Tea social gathering was added by then-Chairman Donald Macauley in 2005 and continues annually. At first meeting the second Monday of the month until, on December 11, 1922 member William J. Lloyd proposed to change from second Monday to avoid conflict with General Electric’s Manufacturing Committee meeting the second Tuesday, making it hard to attend back-to-back meeting nights. Since then the Whiting Club has met on the fourth Monday.
Meetings often involved cultural and civic engagement. Today members are asked to share books, articles, plays, and exhibits that are of interest and the recording secretary preserves these in the Minutes. Member Reverend William Appleton Lawrence made the suggestion that before the delivery of the essay of the evening, members offer “very brief statements … concerning some matter brought to his attention in his own line of work.”[24] A curious example of “cultural sharing” in the first years was when Henry Tapley shared a 1827 bank book with one deposit for $2. made July 18, 1827. Woodbury commented on semi-annual compounding interest would have averaged 4.67% (106) as of 1906. Sometimes members raise civic concerns. Perhaps one of the most interesting questions put before the Club came in 1905 when members were asked to considered the question: “For what manner could $100,000 be best applied to Lynn public or charitable uses.”[25] Twenty-eight replied with suggestions ranging from the Lynn Hospital and other established organizations to the City Missionary, Books for the Blind, Day Nursery, Playgrounds for Children, Firemen’s Relief, and the Trade School for Shoe Workers.
At the meeting in January 1980, the Club tried a different format. Called “Any and All Members,” six members presented short “contributions.” Paul Simpson read from The Joy of Trivia, Gordon Smith told tales of Marblehead’s yachting past—including the story of Boston Yacht Club Commodore Bill Nichol’s 46’ “Marigold” for which he paid only $5,000, Robert Cope spoke on the history of trademarks of brands such as Coca-Cola and Aunt Jemima, Bill Sleigh recited Robert Service poems, Dr. Williams presented on Simeon Bolivar, and Sam Davis opined on the architecture of the new John Hancock building. There was not a movement to change the format permanently, but all agreed that “this type of meeting would be worth repeating.”[26] For several years running thereafter, the Club hosted an annual “open” meeting in mid-winter at which members could share for no more than 10 minutes anything from music, poetry, prose, readings, to opening the Club for discussion. This was repeated in March 2009 hosted by Charlie Newhall and David Decker. Examples of topics include: the poem “Casey at the Bat,” a history of Hingham Derby Academy, an editorial from the Wall St. Journal, a description of the construction of the Crystal Palace in London in 1851, the explanation of a hologram, and how to make an accurate sun dial. Book reviews were added to the list of activities during these “open” meetings.
The early years of the Club hosted a number of guest nights and special events. Almost from the founding, guests have been a standard sight at Club meetings. The first guest noted was Reverend Penniman of Berea College in Kentucky who attended on December 11, 1905. Starting in 1906, the Club met for a midsummer meeting, repeating the gathering in 1907 (at Brooksby Peabody at the home of Joseph Smith), 1908, and in August 1908 at the Danvers Country Club to which they traveled by “Special Trolley Car.” The menu for such occasions suggests something about the group. In June 1906, members toured G.E. River Works, followed by dinner (cookout). The total assessment per member was $1.27. Here is the menu and costs:
25 porterhouse steaks $17.68
1 peck potatoes .30
4 lbs butter 1.12
2 ½ lbs coffee .65
2 lbs pork .20
4 pints cream 1.00
5 lbs. Lobster 1.75
75 lbs. Ice .30
Cigars 3.25
President William H. Taft summered on the North Shore and in 1917 was a guest to the Club on March 6. Meeting at the house of Charles Barney, Taft signed “With best wishes for the Whiting Club” and spoke on the ““League to Enforce Peace” after the close of the present war.”[27] Other guests to the Whiting Club include Samuel Chamberlain (1936). In the 1990s, a highlight was a special September 1994 meeting at Cooper’s Garage in Salem, and a presentation by Donald Koleman on his Bugatti automobile restoration business.
The tradition of inviting spouses and special guests to an annual May Dinner began as a Ladies’ Night in 1906, deemed “A Most Agreeable Innovation.” These were typically in residences of members and included music and readings of Shakespeare and other noted authors.[28] For many years starting in 1912, the gathering was at the Corinthian Yacht Club was in 1912. Here is how the invitation read in pseudo old English:
“Ye Necke of Marblehead Colonie of Massachusetts Bay
Tuesday, September ye 24, 1912
Agreeable to stated notice ye euntie + firste meating of ye
Whiting Clubb was holden at ye Corinthian Yacht Club House
on ye Necke as above stated as fix and a halfe of ye clocke
poft medidian.”
The full meal, including cotuits, tabasco sauce, horseradish, olives, clam chowder, gridironed scrod, broiled lobster, broiled chicken, green corn, Saratoga potatoes, baked Indian pudding, vanilla ice cream, coffee, Carolina panatelas, and Romanoff cigarettes. In recent years, the Ladies’ Night has opened up to other guests and is now called the May Dinner. Locations have included the Eastern Yacht Club, the Manchester Yacht Club, and various restaurants in Salem.
Attendance has averaged approximately 22 over the years. In the 1930s, secretary Walter A. Hall reported “The records of the Whiting Club fail to reveal a single occurrence when all of its members were present at one of its meetings. The maximum attendance of 33 or 94.3% was thrice attained, once at a special midsummer meeting August 29, 1907, again at a regular meeting on February 8, 1909, and third at another special meeting on September 4, 1913.” Hall continued: “Among the reasons which may be assigned to this [decline of attendance] are two which appear controlling. First, the Club was formed by a group of comparatively young men at a period when they had time and energy to devote thereto. As time progressed, the toll of increasing responsibilities, competitive attractions, and the infirmities of age inevitably deprived the Club of a portion of their endeavors. Second, approximately ten percent of the present membership reside out of town during nearly the entire active Club season, and a greater number seek rest and recreation in warmer climate, for extensive periods…”[29] From an examination of the entire archive, this appears to still be true, with typical meetings ranging from 14-24, and rarely more than that in attendance.
Membership
MEMBER. n. One of a community.
My going to demand justice upon five members, my enemies loaded with obloquies.
King Charles[30]
Membership has typically been through social contacts and has ranged across all adult ages, though today’s Club is certainly “older” than in the past. The Club began the tradition of memorializing its members. When a member died, the chairman would appoint another member to write a short (1-4 page) memorial. These are wonderfully hagiographic pieces that speak almost as much to the high character of members as they do to the literary styling of the memorializers. Philip A. Chase, an original member, died in 1904. A wreath was given by the Club and an extended note of appreciation inscribed into the Minutes, noting his success as in business and his talents given to the Lynn Institution for Savings, to the Lynn Woods, and to the Lynn Hospital. Amory also died in 1904. The meeting was postponed a week and a memorial was also written for Amory. In part, it read: “He was the founder of the Whiting Club, the purpose of which is to promote an intelligent interest in the moral, educational and social problems of the day.”[31] This description of Amory would flatter anyone: “His eager mind was always on the alert to improve every opportunity of usefulness. His heart and hand was ever open, and many a family could hear witness to his unstinted generosity in their time of need. The extent to his charities will never be known,—they were so quiet and unostentatious. His influence was felt beyond the limits of these two cities.”[32]
Two early members ought to give some sense of the membership. Charles Jeptha Hill (known as “C.J.H.”) Woodbury was born in Lynn in 1851. He graduated Lynn High School, Harvard, and MIT with a degree in civil engineering and ran a mill in Rockport. An engineer for Boston Manufacturers’ Mutual Fire Insurance Co., American Bell Telephone Co, assistant engineer, and secretary for The National Association of Cotton Manufacturers, Woodbury was fascinated by the world of technology and made it his business. He was awarded numerous prestigious Franklin Awards, largely for his electrical works and fire suppression apparatus and published a number of books, including the 200 page The Fire Protection of Mills. At one meeting he shared an original copy of Franklin’s experiments upon electricity. To another, he be brought in a book for the blind with raised print, a very new technology at the time. As secretary-treasurer of the Club, he wrote terrific Minutes, such as this on April 29, 1907. “So far as the Secretary could ascertain in the vigilant exercise of his duties from his point of vantage, there was not a single instance of a member lapsing into misapprehension that he was seated in a pew, –at least audibly.” He died in 1916. Edward Tufts, a more recent member, followed in his footsteps in many ways, including authoring several books on fires, fire equipment, and a history of the Salem fire department.
Luther Atwood typified the well-educated schoolteacher, and followed Woodbury as secretary-treasurer in 1916. A graduate of Phillips Exeter and a member of the Harvard class of 1883, Atwood—from New York—was a teacher at Lynn Classical High School for decades. His memorial written by member Ned Wilson reads: “He was always anxious to see our membership made up of earnest thinking people, meeting companionably once in a while and able to present worthwhile subjects to the group.” The Lynn Museum has five volumes of Luther Atwood’s dairies, which show him to be a gentle man, interested in the weather, going to the Lynn Oxford Club, going to the Public Library with his son, going on outings.
The issue of including women as members of the Club has arisen over the years. In 1978, Bill Sleigh moved that “it is the sense of the meeting that it is desirable to open Club membership to women.” [33] This was followed by a second and a vote by a show of hands. The motion was defeated. Similarly, in 2005, Ben Strohecker made a similar proposal and then-Chairman Don Macauley encouraged a discussion among members. It was pointed out by Charlie Newhall that the bylaws do not restrict membership to men, it is only “by tradition” that the Club has been only men. After some deliberation and some heated exchanges, the Club affirmed (by a majority) itself as a male organization for the time being.
Members move and resign, others are granted honorary membership which excuses them from preparing and delivering an essay every third year. On July 24, 1922, member William B. Little, M.D. wrote to the Club: “It occurs to me that I may be expected to write a paper sometime in the coming Whiting Club season. If so I shall be obliged to decline it for an indefinite period.” This caused much discussion at the September Trustees’ meeting, and it was decided to ask for his resignation which he tendered. The only evidence that a member has been asked to leave the Club came in 1968. It seems the member found himself in the local papers and the Club asked him to answer the charges. When he ignored the letters from the Club, he was dropped. This former member shall remain nameless here. In 1947, the category of “honorary membership” was approved and Edward F. Breed and Dr. Nathaniel Breed were the first in that rank.
A New Century
CENTURY. n. A hundred; usually employed to specify time, as, the second century.
The nature of eternity is such, that, through our joys, after some centuries of years, may
seem to have grown older, by having been enjoyed for ages, yet will they really still
continue new. Boyle.[34]
The 21st century has reshaped much of our associational life and brought a new digital age. The Whiting Club continues to be an in-person group and to have a formal structure. Most members still wear ties and the meetings follow a similar format as they did a century ago. John P. Adams, a longtime member and former librarian of the Salem Athenaeum served as recording secretary in the early 21st century and wrote many of the minutes in verse. J. D. Scrimgeour, member and Salem State English professor, continues to write minutes in verse. This is a new way for the Whiting Club to embrace our interest in creative writing in community.
Scholarship on associationalism grapples with the patterns of civic engagement and community bonding. Robert D. Putman, in his celebrated Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) points out that “American history …is a story of ups and downs in civic engagement, not just downs—a story of collapse and of renewal…within living memory the bonds of community in America were becoming stronger, not weaker, and…it is within our power to reverse the decline of the last several decades.”[35] Tracing those patterns, there are several periods when associational life is on the rise. The British colonial period, presented it here, is particularly striking. So too was the Progressive Era when associational life was in its “golden age.”
However, since the end of 1950s, Putnam argues, American civic engagement and participation in voluntary associations has been on the decline. He attributes the recent decline to the following factors, with “guesstimated” percentages of significance:
- “Pressure of time and money, including the special pressures on two-career families” at 10%
- “Suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl”, 10%
- Television, and other forms of electronic entertainment, also labeled the rise of “private entertainment”, 25%
- “Generational change”, by which he means “the slow, steady, and ineluctable replacement of the long civic generation by their less involved children and grandchildren”, 50%[36]
Combined (95%) with other less significant factors, Putnam’s four variables suggest that people have become less involved with their communities because of the confluence of these overlapping factors.
The Whiting Club has bucked this trend. Certainly, it has had its ups and downs in terms of membership. For the first 40 or so years, the secretary gave an annual “average attendance” and even plotted it on a chronological graph. Though the overall pattern from the heydays of the first decades was declining attendance, the Club remained strong. Perhaps, if measured by organization, the Club was at a low point in the early 1980s; however, enthusiasm remained high and it was in those same years that Ladies’ Night was reorganized and rejuvenated.
As we are now well into the next century of the Whiting Club, we should remain vigilant that this is a living club, created in the associational tradition of self-improvement, wit, and good entertainment. Today, men and women gather in association together readily and there are many groups that are exclusively for men and others solely for women. With increasing gender awareness, there is less drive for exclusivity on many fronts. It is the activity—reading, writing, and thinking in community—which brings people together.
“Literal truth-telling is out of place in an essay.” Virginia Woolf
The author wishes to thank Diane Shepard and the staff at the Lynn Museum (formerly Lynn Historical Society), current membership and officers of the Whiting Club, and chair Mike Maginn for support of this project. Additionally, he offers homage to his grandfather, Charles Boardman Newhall who was a longtime member of the Club and to T. McLean Griffin who invited the author to join. Thanks also to Scott Vile of Ascensius Press.
[1] As mentioned by E. B. White and Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, (London, 1755). A Dictionary of the English Language: A Digital Edition of the 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson. Edited by Brandi Besalke. 721. Accessed July 16, 2020. https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/
[2] E. B. White, Essays of E.B. White, (New York: Harper Collins, 1977). ix.
[3] Johnson, 395-396.
[4] Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 1580-1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000): 1-2.
[5] David S. Shields, “Salons, Coffeehouses, Conventicles, and Taverns” in Encyclopedia of American Cultural & Intellectual History, edited by Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W. Williams (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001), Volume III: 343.
[6] Dr. Alexander Hamilton, The Tuesday Club: A Shorter Edition of The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club, edited by Robert Micklus (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995): 84-95.
[7] By the way, a decade and a half ago the COV reaffirmed itself as a men’s club, losing some members as a consequence, but quickly replacing them with new members. The bylaws say nothing about the sex of the membership, so technically, it is open, like the Whiting Club. Its core is asserted in the 1991 bylaws: “The purpose of the Club is to promote literary and artistic tastes, to establish and maintain a place for social meetings and a reference library, to provide occasional exhibits of a special and instructive character, and to publish rare prints and books relating to historical and literary matters.”
[8] David S. Shields, Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill: Institute of Early American Culture, 1997): 326.
[9] Salem Miscellaneous MSS., I, as quoted in: James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century, Salem: Essex Institute, 1969, p. 180. (Houghton Mifflin, 1937)
[10] Ibid, p. 182.
[11] Ibid, p. 181.
[12] Alfred W. Putnam, The Putnam Club of Salem, Massachusetts (Salem: The Putnam Club, 1941) 5.
[13] Alexander Pope, as quoted in Johnson. 716.
[14] Present at the first meeting were 21 Lynn gentlemen, many suggested by Howard Mudge Newhall, including: Waldo L. Abbott, Isaac F. Baker, Rev. Augustine H. Amory, Albion Hale Drainard, William Burrill, Philip A. Chase, Capt. Henry N. Comey, J. A. Dalzell, Edward V. French, Charles Fuller, Benjamin N. Johnson, Thomas D. Knight, Dr. William B. Little, Prof. Geo H. Martin, Howard M. Newhall, James Newhall, Benjamin F. Spinney, Rev. Samuel B. Stewart, Henry F. Tapley, C. J. H Woodbury, and Louis A. Wyman. Thirteen others sent regrets, asking to be recognized “to be endowed with the same privileges as if present.” (Minutes) Howard Mudge Newhall was secretary pro tempore. Five men were appointed to draft a constitution: Rev. Amory, chairman, Prof. George Martin, Howard Mudge Newhall, Rev. Samuel B. Stewart, and C.J.H. Woodbury, secretary.
[15] Minutes: 3.
[16] A decade later, Edward V. French, another founding member, crafted his history entitled “The Founding and Early Days of The Whiting Club.” French situated The Whiting Club among other similar North Shore associations, including the Lawrence Monday Evening Club and the Monday Evening Club of Haverhill, both of which were direct influences upon the formation of the traditions of our Club. S. Whitney Bradley updated a history of the Club for the 75th anniversary in 1978, and some may be familiar with that version as it was once widely distributed at the time. Further, Dr. Chauncey C. Sheldon in 1904 and my grandfather, Charles B. Newhall, in 1940, prepared biographical essays of the Reverend Samuel Whiting, for whom the Club is named.
[17] The Boston Thursday Evening Club continues as an essay/lecture/dinner monthly association to this day.
[18] Edward V. French, “The Founding and Early Days of The Whiting Club,” Essay read before the Whiting Club, April 25, 1941: 3.
[19] As quoted in French: 3A.
[20] Minutes: 9.
[21] Minutes: 10.
[22] Minutes: 12-13.
[23] Johnson, 2080.
[24] Minutes, Book 5: 34.
[25] Minutes, Book 5.
[26] Minutes, January 28, 1980
[27] Minutes, Book 4: 21.
[28] The printed programs give a sense of the erudition. In 1909, the musical program included Jadassohn “Allegro,” Sibelius “Gavotte,” Gluck-Brahms “Romance,” Victor Staub “Sous Bois,” Bohm “Adagio,” and Mendelssohn “Scherzo.” In 1912 the program was Schumann “Messages,” Strauss “Dream in the Twilight,” “The Lover’s Pledge,” “All for a Half a Crown,” Weingartner “If Slender Lillies” and “Among the Stars,” Godefroid “Ballad” and “Rondo brillante”, Wagner “Romance”, E. Schuecker “Cradle Song” and “Mazurka,” and Bantock, Six Jester Songs, “The Jester,” “Will-o-the-wisp,” “Tra-la-la-lei” performed by a baritone, harpist, and piano player.
[29] Minutes, Book 8:18.
[30] Johnson, 1283.
[31] Minutes: 53.
[32] Minutes: 53-54.
[33] Minutes, January 30, 1978
[34] Johnson, 348-349.
[35] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000): 25. Italics original.
[36] Putnam: 283-284.
The Whiting Club 