The sun (New York [N.Y.]), February 10, 1907, (Second Section) Page 17.
WHEN DEEP THINKERS DINE.
PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED AT THE SUNRISE CLUB.
From Mrs. Lease to Emma Goldman. From Jack London to Upton Sinclair, There’s No Brand of Anarchy or Socialism That Is Too Startling for Them.
The Sunrise Club, according to an unquestioned tradition of years, is an organization so heavily charged with running expenses and dynamic wickedness that even the most hardened veteran may get a new deal in the way of thrill and shock. It is spoken of, even in the most advanced coteries of the Communistic Belt, with bated breath. Its discussions have not been published, they assert, because an effete editorial management have not the good of the public at heart and excuse themselves by the artificial plea that such discussions are not fit for the reading of a reform ridden public.
The history of the club furnishes many distinguished names to the lookers-up of Who’s Why in Clubdom. Mary Elizabeth Lease, the silver tongued oratress of Kansas, and other postprandial prattlers have parcelled out the Gould and Rockefeller fortunes to the satisfaction of those present. Emma Goldman has, it is hinted, showered a few vocal bombs. Jack London, Upton Sinclair and many Herrs are read in the annals as among the invited guests.
It is to argue oneself unknown not to know that without the continued interest of the Sunrise Club in its existence vegetarianism would long ago have split over the questions as to whether protoplasms à la Béarnaise are or are not animal substances and whether rhododendrons made into a salad contain as much nourishment as when put into the soup.
Anti-vaccination has time and time again furnished an appetizing discussion during the dinner hours and sacrificially inclined members have displayed their marks with as much pride as a Heidelberg student his scars. Free Love has not been frowned upon as a topic of the hour and has reached the dignity of stereopticon views on the side, and there isn’t a single phase of socialism from the conservative sort to the kind that shrieks for the time when everybody shall be housed under one gigantic roof and when everybody shall get everybody else’s breakfast.
In lieu of these reports it was suggested that the visitors from THE SUN don asbestos suits for the occasion, and a couple that were not in use for the Thaw trial were loaned for the evening. It was all on account of this same Thaw trial that the Broadway Central Hotel was chosen for the meeting ground. It was decided by the committee of arrangements that the knowledge of twelve jurors in such close proximity would give a certain tang to the event.
The Sunrise Club has no special locale for its meetings, but lends the prestige of its presence to many spots, the only difference, as explained by one of the members, being that in some places they have to sit closer to each other than at others. The other reason for the choice of the Broadway Central lay in the fact that being equidistant from the Brooklyn Bridge and the Christopher street ferry it would allow the Devil May Cares who live in Hackensack and Williamsburg an equal chance.
You could tell as soon as you came inside the door that somethin’ was to be doin’. The bellboy pronounced the word Sunrise as if it had unholy meaning attached, and at the top of the stairs the master of ceremonies had his spectacles pushed half way up his H. brow.
Not knowing that THE SUN was represented, the master of ceremonies told some perfectly rippin’ things about the dinner to be in the interval of waiting.
He said first of all that a maid at the end of the corridor would check the galoshes as soon as she got through fixing some rooms upstairs, and the reason the club was called Sunrise was because it frequently happened that the members who lived in Pompton, N. J., saw the dawn before they reached that place.
He also mentioned, very incidentally, that the dinner would cost $1.50 each per head, and that strangers must know a member of the club. When he found that the strangers did not know any member of the club he said that they were just as welcome, but that the rules had to be enforced and it would be $1.50 apiece.
He adds as an addendum that the visitors must try and not be too greatly shocked. They are to remember that the Sunrise Club spells progress to its phonetic limit and that it is only by its aid that mankind is led along the path of advance through the undergrowth of falsehood.
He would have said more on this subject had he not been interrupted by a young thing of some fifty summers, who said she just loved club types and that if they needed her she would recite a terribly wicked ode of Edwin Markham.
The president of two or three women’s clubs is greeted next by the master of ceremonies. He looks askance at her new lace waist of the Renaissance variety as being hardly consistent with an inherent belief in the absolute emancipation of women from the thrall of man.
After the lace waist, people come along so fast that you can’t tally them. The men are either baldheaded or wear whiskers, but the superiority of the latter named is proved by the fact that while the bald heads are all of one fashion, the whiskers vary from the scalloped, plain edged, gusseted, seamed and pinked styles, through the gamut of long and short, side and front, accordion plaited and empire. This creed of individualism is shown, too, by the variety of shades, ranging from the Leslie Carter, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Frank Leslie tints to the more vivid ones that honor the name of the club.
Highbrows are never accompanied by lowcut dresses. This is one of the rules of the Sunrise Club. The woman who has accepted the escort of a Highbrow through life or for a dinner is supposed to know this, and on the night in question no feminine iconoclast was present. The dresses were buttoned up tight and a great deal of hair was worn, thus forming the necessary and artistic contrast.
The arrangement of the Sunrise sitting might be copied by other organizations with benefit to the actors therein. Although a large crowd was present there was absolutely no confusion. Every plate was marked with a slip of paper with a name on it. When you found the name Smith, say, and your name corresponded, you sat down at that plate. If your name did not happen to be Smith you just tore the slip up and sat down.
A long table holds the common stock, a short one the preferred, and the overflow is taken care of at a third. The preferred stock represents the speakers, but the master of ceremonies assured everybody that they had the same dinner.
At your first glance for the celebrities who are travelling incognito you have pointed out a young man with a strangely intelligent face who is said to be the inventor of a child’s cocktail, as the Sunrise Club believes in commencing the education of the young at the cradle’s edge. It was stated that whatever fortune is made out of this would be devoted to the poor.
Another celebrity that matched him in the attention excited was a woman who had taken a Cook’s tour and married a poet. It is said they are perfectly happy; that every evening he reads him her diary of the trip and he reads her a poem.
As soon as the bell sounds the waiters rush in with trays laden with bottles and glasses. The bottles contain Worcestershire, tobacco and tomato ketchup, the glasses are for the ice water, of which the club partakes with a generous abandon. No wine or other spirits is drunk.
Topping the menu is a miniature of Thomas Paine. It is the 117th anniversary of his natal day and the Sunrise Club have made that the excuse for their dinner.
As he goes about collecting the money for the dinner during the soup course—a wise precaution considering the number of out of towners—the master of ceremonies explains the popularity of the evening by stating that not only the Sunrisers are present but the Manhattan Liberal Club and the Paine Association of Brooklyn. The Martini Conservatives had a previous engagement. He also stated, by request, that the Paine Association would celebrate the birthday the next night at their own headquarters. Celebrating birthdays the day after is a peculiar custom of Brooklyn.
In these present days when settlement workers in tulle ruchettes or top hats, according to sex, are to be found on every East Side corner and socialism is served at every financial magnate’s dinner as an appetizer it isn’t often that you can get a line on real progress. The visitors from THE SUN eat their dinners, at $1.50 a head, therefore, and listen with pencils and ears.
A Nyack member inquires of his next neighbor if he has attended the last meeting of the Collectivists and the other responds that he meant to and that lack of attendance does not always imply that you are posted for dues but that on the night in question he called for his wife at a mother’s meeting and got so interested in the discussion there that he forgot all about the Collectivists.
A middle aged couple whose dictionaries have only the one word, Kant, discuss the psychological significance of the Teddy bear on the formative period of life and agree that there is but one logical ending of such a beginning—the longing for Sixteenth Amendment, which will take in the rights of the downtrodden.
There is a young man who acts as a jester and hopes that his name and face won’t get in the papers, particularly his face, as the boys at the office would kid him so. He points out members of the Clothing Cutters’ Union, the male man who writes fashion notes for the Dry Goods Economist, and another who has made a fortune with a Socialist magazine on the gold mining stock advertised largely in it, 10 cents a copy, bringing education and an opportunity to get rid of superfluous cash within the reach of the most benighted farmer. The young man deplores the falsity of his sex.
He then points out a young woman gowned in black fish scales and a picture hat, who, he says, looks like Salome, so he can answer his own cue and say that if that is so none could blame John the Baptist for the stand he took.
After this last sally of wit the master of ceremonies announces that the dinner has been merely a pleasant preliminary to the real joy of the evening. Chairs of the common and watered stock are moved to the neighborhood of the preferred, waiters hurry away with disordered demi-tasses and three men order cigarettes. Two of them light theirs and the third offers his to a lady friend. She withers him with a glance that seems to say that the may attend a dinner of the Sunrise Club, but he ought to know that the day has gone by when because a woman does an unconventional act she may be insulted with impunity.
Mr. Henry Rowley presides and introduces in turn Mr. Theodore Schroeder, who speaks on “The Danger in Popular Verdicts Based on Fear and Interest”; Mr. Gaylord Wilshire, who talks about half an hour on “Thomas Paine as a Revolutionist”; Mrs. Florence Johnson, who chirps about “Paine’s Attitude on Woman’s Status and Rights”; the Rev. Robert J. Lockhart, on “Thomas Paine’s Historical Place in Modern Progress”; Mr. Alexander R. Webb, on “Paine as Seen by an American Adherent of Islam,” and Mr. Thaddeus B. Wakeman, on “Paine, the World Statesman.” The Rev. Madison C. Peters, whose regrets did not reach the committee until his name was printed in large black type on the programme, sent a note filled with esteem and Paine.
It is evident to the most casual reader that such a programme offers unlimited swing for the iconoclastic ideas and progressive opinions that have made the Sunrise Club so famous. For the next hour and a half bromidian sayings have no place to themselves, plentifully sprinkled by the ice water, which it is said that the Broadway Central supplies free.
After each sentence the speaker waits for the applause which never fails him. When he becomes especially daring he gets double the amount and people turn and look at each other with compressed lips. After three quarters of an hour the president of three women’s clubs whispers that the excitement is too much, and goes out to sit in the cool corridor. The master of ceremonies, still worried about the Renaissance lace waist, follows her there discreetly.
The sentences remembered are these:
“The revolutionist is the man who puts a new idea into our heads.” Applause by the Manhattan Liberals.
“Paine is more alive to-day than ever.” Applause by the Paines.
“He taught us to keep a leash on the passions.” Loud applause from the Creston Corps and the Accordion Pleats.
“He demanded greater freedom for women.” Smiles from the One Woman Speaker and Salome.
“Whenever you find yourself agreeing with the majority it is time to readjust your conclusions.” Applause from all and ice water passed around.
“The commonplace man is not a genius.” Cheers from the H. Brows.
“When we see a potato vine in the cellar we know that the greatest accumulation of growth will be found toward the light.”
Remark by the young man who doesn’t want his face printed: “That’s the way the gas bills accumulate, too.”
“When men keep silence knowledge often increases.” Approval shown by a burst of conversation and handclappings.
At this point the suburbanites awaken and consult timepieces. It is 10:30. At 25 minutes to 11 there are only the visitors and half a dozen members left who gather about the preferred stock table and commence to form another club. They elect each other to all the offices in sight and agree on a dollar a dinner due. They will be called, it may be mentioned for the sake of anxious ones, “The Paine Branch.”
From the few hushed sentences that penetrated the gloom it was learned that they intended to be as radical as the Sunrise Club and that they would go even further and, if necessary, spell progress with only one s—progres.