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The Franklin Inn Club by Seymour I. Toll Nine leaders of Philadelphia’s cultural life met at the University Club on February 9, 1902 to form the Franklin Inn Club. They sought the collegiality of a literary coterie, and the pleasures of dining and conversation in a permanent setting in the city. J. Bertram Lippincott presided and Francis Churchill Williams acted as secretary. The other founders were Cyrus Townsend Brady, John Luther Long, William Jasper Nicolls, S. Decatur Smith, Jr., Frederick W. Unger, Francis Howard Williams and Harrison S. Morris. Ten days later they met to spell out the purposes and rules: “That the object of this author’s club is to promote the literary activities of Philadelphia by establishing and conducting a place of meeting where the members may become better known to each other, and which will furnish the ordinary facilities of a club-house.” They limited membership to those who had written a book (other than medical or legal text), or contributed to literary magazines or periodicals, or were publishers of such journals. The founders decided to invite twenty-five men to join. When each had contributed $25, the club would become a permanent organization. They elected, as its first president, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a prominent neurologist, pioneer in psychiatry, and novelist of colonial Philadelphia. A t a meeting at the Art Club on March 4, 1902, Dr. Mitchell and his colleagues reported that they had gathered forty-three signatures on the original resolutions. The still nameless club had taken an option to purchase 1218 Chancellor Street in the heart of Philadelphia. At the third meeting, members considered naming their new organization. The Franklin Inn Club won the poll with fourteen votes. Franklin Head and The Authors’ Club each received three votes. The members then adopted a constitution and bylaws. Measured by the pace at which real estate transactions are consummated today, the new club acted with astonishing speed. (It has never again done anything so quickly or efficiently.) The date of the first recorded meeting at 1218 Chancellor Street was June 4, 1902. By then the property had been acquired for $6,000 and the club had authorized $2,000 for suitable alterations. At a second meeting later that month members adopted a revised constitution and bylaws in accordance with requirements of the charter the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas granted on May 12, 1902. The charter restated the purpose of the Franklin Inn Club: “To promote social intercourse and friendship among authors, illustrators, editors and publishers, and to that end to maintain a clubhouse for the use of its members.” The literary credentials defined the club’s exclusively male membership well into the century. Following World War II, qualifications for admission were broadened to include those “contributing notably to the literary, artistic or intellectual life of the community.” The club admitted women to membership in 1980, and by the 1980s, in addition to its literary core, academics and doctors and lawyers who also wrote for a general readership, the membership included judges, bankers, physicians, museum and library directors, botanists, bibliophiles, newspaper editors and colum¬nists, broadcasting executives, academic scientists, and a theater administrator. The club’s first publication listed S. Weir Mitchell as president, Joseph H. Coates as vice-president, Francis Churchill Williams as secretary, and William Jasper Nicolls as treasurer. The directors were Mitchell, Horace Howard Furness, Craige Lippincott, Joseph G. Rosengarten, S. Decatur Smith, Jr., Cyrus T. Brady, and John Luther Long. On the membership committee were other leaders of cultural Philadelphia: Harrison S. Morris, J. Bertram Lippincott, Edward W. Bok , and Owen Wister. Serving luncheon every day but Sunday, the Chancellor Street clubhouse quickly became an embarrassment of early success. It was so popular that members soon began grumbling about tight quarters, but the problem of limited funds scotched efforts to move to a larger clubhouse. Nevertheless, pressure to move persisted. At a special meeting on March 1, 1907, upon motion of noted surgeon and medical author, Dr. J. William White, a committee was charged with finding more comfortable quarters. Within two months, at another special meeting, members unanimously agreed to sell the Chancellor Street property and purchase seven houses, 205-207-209 South Camac Street and 1205- 1207-1209-1211 St. James Street, for $25,000. They authorized an expenditure of $4,000 for alterations necessary to create what has since been called the “Inn,” the members’ affectionate name for their clubhouse at st. James and Camac streets. They subscribed $11,300 and sold the Chancellor Street house for $8,500. On June 6, 1907, the newly rehabilitated property was transferred to the Franklin Inn Club. As the prominent American literary historian and club president (1960-63), Robert Spiller, wrote more than a half-century later, “In recent years, it has taken [the club] longer to buy a refrigerator. ” The club celebrated the opening of its new quarters on November 8, 1907, with a housewarming attended by fifty members and presided over by Dr. Mitchell. The North American reported in a news story the following morning, “There were no guests but the membership is such that the gathering was a distinguished one without recourse to outsiders.” The insiders the reporter had in mind were Philadelphia Brahmins such as Mitchell, Shakespearean commentator Horace Howard Furness, University of Pennsylvania professor John Bach McMaster, and Penn provost Charles Custis Harrison. Younger author-members included John Luther Long, Churchill Williams, and Francis Howard Williams. The physical design of the Inn reflected the very idea of the club itself. Designer Francis G. Caldwell tried to reproduce the imagined appearance and ambiance of an inn in the days of Benjamin Franklin. Caldwell’s original model was the noted Tavern Club of Boston. The club’s secretary, author-historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, commented: “We like the present situation because the narrow side street is suggestive of the old tavern to which we have tried to make our new clubhouse conform. We look forward with great pleasure to the wider artistic possibilities presented by the audience hall of our new house.” By the 1980s what had been a charming, early twentieth-century center city mews had become Hogarthian, although the area is now physically on the upgrade. In addition to requiring a setting conducive to pleasant talk over food and drink, the club needed an upstairs “audience room” which would provide satisfactory facilities for the plays, masques, musicals, and other theatrical productions members regularly mounted. In minute detail, furnishings in the new quarters copied those of a colonial tavern. Much of the original appearance of the place has been preserved, and the arts-and-Ietters patina upon it of the past eighty-five years would surely gratify those whose nostalgia for colonial Philadelphia inspired it all. The first floor with its entrance, dining hall, and kitchen, had white woodwork, low ceilings traversed by heavy rafters supported by sturdy pillars, and a brick fireplace capped by a high mantle. Portraits and old prints hung on the walls. Its wainscoting and diamond-paned windows would have been familiar to Franklin. The dining room cupboards held rows of library colonial glass and quaint old blue willow ware which was eventually displaced by the club’s steadily growing library. Many of the books were written by members, all of whom donate copies of their works to the club’s library as an obligation of membership. The pictures and sculpture, most of which came from studios of artist members, enrich the culture of the place. Today, the walls are hung with photographic portraits of former club presidents, and artwork done by club members: caricatures of members drawn by Public Ledger cartoonist Wyncie King and architect Alfred Bendiner, bronze bas reliefs of members by Sculptor R. Tait McKenzie, watercolors and oils by artists Ben Wolf and Benton Spruance. At the end of the dining room alcove are French doors giving onto a tiny garden. On a pedestal in the garden sits the bronze bust of Franklin by Joseph J. Greenberg, Jr. Franklin looks benignly upon all who dine within at the common “long table. ” Dark rafters still span the second floor audience hall, although the original somber brown curtains covering the windows are gone. Until theatrical productions ceased after World War II, a stage dominated the north end of the hall. It faced a fireplace on the south wall above which hung a large oil portrait of Franklin. The stage is gone but books and pictures continue to accrete in bookcases and along the walls. A grand piano serves the club’s occasional musical needs. The physical character of the Inn still precisely reflects the club’s nature, literary with strong interests in the wider culture of present and past. The place is as shabby genteel as elbow patches on a professor’s old tweed jacket. At every turn there is abiding evidence of the affection members have for unpretentiously preserving the look and feel of a cultured past, whether real or imagined. The heart of the club has always been its “long table” at which three-course lunches are served every weekday. The number of diners at any given meal is unpredictable, but they will always find Mr. William Green, the club’s long beloved waiter and friend, serving them at the bleached oak board set with carafes of red and white wine. There is certain to be pleasant, sometimes delightful, conversation whether it be with only one other companion or a dozen kindred souls. Since its opening, the Inn has been not only a regular gathering place for members but a welcoming way station for guests and distinguished visitors passing through town. At the end of January 1921, for example, the English essayist, playwright and novelist G. K. Chesterton was in the city to lecture. His host, the novelist and illustrator George Gibbs brought him to lunch. Out-of-town luminaries occasionally show up as luncheon guests throughout each year. Although the club’s dramatic productions have disappeared, three other long traditions survive and prosper: end-of-the-month Friday evening dinners, Christmas luncheons, and J. William White dinners. The Friday evening cocktail-dinner meetings (except in summer months) include members and their guests who repair to the second floor following the meal. A gathering can number anywhere from thirty to eighty. Since this is a club which suffers its inefficiencies with amusement, diners find themselves untroubled by occasionally having to haul their dining chairs upstairs to provide adequate seating for the after-dinner lecture. A member—always a member—then delivers what the audience silently hopes will be a witty discourse on an engaging subject. Hope is sometimes triumphant. For random examples, in recent years topics discussed (or sung) at Friday evening meetings have included ancient Chinese medicine, music set to ballads of Robert Burns, the adventures of Lorenzo da Ponte in America, medical ethics, bibliophilic passion, and a speaker’s poetry struck off for private occasions. Annual Christmas luncheons are held only for members, who are eased to table with generous servings from the bowl of Fish House Punch Mr. Green prepares for the occasion. Following the meal, the devoted staff receives checks in appreciation for their year-long services. The holiday season is expected to inspire the subject of the talk following luncheon, although the speaker is free to chat about anything and occasionally does. The annual January business meeting is held on or within a week of Franklin’s birthday, January 17, and concludes with the J. William White dinner. It takes its name from the prominent member-surgeon (incidentally, the last man in Pennsylvania to be challenged to a duel) whose endowment of $4,000 many years ago was intended to cover the cost of dinner and champagne for members then and future. When Dr. White made his gift early in the century, the value and earning capacity of the dollar was such that members at these dinners did indeed dine and drink gratis (in 1902 the regular dinner was. 25¢; ninety years later it is $24). As the century nears its end, however, all that remains of the donor’s endowment is the memory of his illustrious name and generous disposition. Although the fund has long been exhausted, the Franklinian gusto, wit, and good will that pervade the dinner survive undiminished as does the trio of enthusiastic toasts given at each of these fetes: to the doctors three, Franklin, Mitchell, and White. The Inn’s presidents have been S. Weir Mitchell (1902-14), John Bach McMaster (1914-30), George Gibb (1930-39), Edward W. Mumford (1939-40), Samuel Scoville, Jr. (1940-46), John D. Kern (1946-47), Hugh Wagnon (1947-48), Graeme Lorimer (1948-52), David M. Robb (1952-54), Joseph A. Livingston (1954-57), Melvin K. Whiteleather (1957-60), Robert E. Spiller (1960-63), Clarence Morris (1963-66), Whitfield J. Bell, Jr. (1966-69), Edwin Wolf 2nd (1969-72), Edward S. Gifford, Jr. (1972-75), B. Dale Davis (1975-78), Keith Doms (1978-81), Seymour I. Toll (1981-84), Ben Wolf (1984-87), George R. Allen (1987-89), Margaret C. Barringer (1990-91), and Jack B. Justice (1991- ). In recent years the club has published a monthly newsletter edited by its secretary Milton Rothman. The club has revived the pleasant custom of an annual late spring “outing” at a member’s residence. Once or twice a month luncheons feature a speaker who may talk informally about anything from Nubian art to mayoral politics. From an original membership of 53 in 1902, the roll has grown to a combined resident and nonresident membership of 164 in 1991. Today the club must contend with the concern common to every club whose essential strength is rooted in members having the time to dine together. The accelerating pace of daily life as well as the insatiable financial demands for maintaining staff and physical facilities threaten the continued existence of such clubs. Nevertheless, the centripetal force of Franklin Inn Club members’ deep-seated affection for this quaint outpost of civility endures. After ninety years, it continues to be the reason for its existence.