THE PARLOUR EVENINGS
Through January · New York · Evenings · Hosted by the Court
The Parlour Evenings are the Court’s standing engagement through January. A borrowed room, several evenings across the month, sixteen places at each.
Cards and backgammon. A decanter that stays on the table. Whisky poured, and cigars where the room allows them. Nobody is introduced and nobody is announced.
The Form
Every club that has lasted was built around a room where nothing was scheduled.
The parlour, the card room, the smoking room. Places a member could enter without an appointment, find whoever happened to be there, and stay or not. No programme, no speaker, no seating plan, and no reason required for turning up.
That is the rarest thing in modern social life and the easiest to provide. It needs a room, some furniture, and a rule against organising it.
The Court keeps these evenings in January because January is the month with nothing else in it, and because a society that convenes only for occasions is not a society.
The Evenings
Several across the month, on weeknights, from seven until the room empties.
There is no dinner. There is something to eat and it is not the point.
The tables are set for cards and backgammon and both get played. Members who want neither sit by the fire and talk, which is equally the point.
Nobody is introduced. A member who arrives is not walked round the room and presented. He finds a chair and the room absorbs him. This is deliberate, and it is the thing guests notice first.
Arrivals and departures go unremarked. A member may come at nine and leave at ten and nobody will ask why.
What Is Asked
The code is stated in the invitation. These are the least formal of the Court’s engagements, and they are not informal.
Telephones stay in pockets.
No photographer attends. This is the one engagement the Court does not record, and it is the only evening in the year that leaves nothing behind.
Nobody is pitched at the table.
A member may bring a guest by arrangement, and answers for them.
The Places
Sixteen at each evening. Members write to say which they will attend, and the Court replies.
The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the whole of the evening.
