THE CIGAR ROOM

The Cigar Room is an evening in the middle of March for twelve. A small selection is put up and a bottle set beside it.

Members drift in through the night. Nothing is presented, nobody speaks from the front, and the conversation finds its own subject.

The Form

The Court examines things properly at three other evenings in the year. Wine is poured blind and scored. Perfume is smelled in its parts. Cloth is chosen from bolts with a tailor explaining what each will do.

This is the evening where nothing is examined.

There is no tasting, no notes, no expert and no order of service. What is put up is put up because somebody thought it was good. A member who wants to know what it is may ask. A member who does not may smoke it in ignorance and enjoy it exactly as much.

That is deliberate. A room in which everything is being appreciated is a room in which nobody is talking about anything else, and some pleasures are damaged by being studied.

The smoking room exists because of a smell. Victorian houses banished tobacco from the drawing room, so the men withdrew to a room of their own, kept a jacket there to take the smoke, and changed back before rejoining the company. The arrangement rested on an exclusion and that is not defended here.

But what it produced by accident was the only room in the house with no purpose. Nothing was scheduled in it and nothing was expected of anybody in it, and a great deal got decided there precisely because nothing was supposed to be.

The Evening

Twelve places. The room opens at nine and closes when it closes.

There is no sitting down and no hour of arrival. Members come when they come, and a member who arrives at eleven has missed nothing, because there was nothing to miss.

A small selection is put up and a bottle beside it. Both are chosen by the Court and neither is explained.

The chairs face one another rather than a fire or a screen, which is the only piece of staging in the room.

What Is Asked

The code is stated in the invitation.

Nobody has to smoke. It is a room rather than an obligation, and a member who comes for the company and the bottle is welcome in it.

Telephones stay in pockets. No photographer attends. This is the second engagement of the year the Court does not record, and it is not recorded for the same reason as the first.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

Twelve. It is the number a room of that size holds when everyone in it can still hear everyone else.

Members are written to in February. The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the whole of the evening.