The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 9, 1903, Page 45

'Pages 45 t0 48 — The - all, SAN FRANCISCO, SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 1903. LADIES' ARMY AND NAVY CLUB OF LONDON, ONLY A YEAR OLD, GOSSIP OF AMERICANS IN EUROPE Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor Making Social Hit in London. R SNDON. Aug 5.—Mre. } is Lx f Is lor i mow Mackeys, and mendous hit have recel in English c her previc other ¥o Mackey Mrs. C E ception the day most fashionab present. Mrs sally referred to as “pretty Mrs and her girlish sty 3 sally admired. She and Mrs. Mackey to their at Leamington. Among other Americans who have entertained Mrs. Chatfield-T lor are Embassador Mrse. Cho and Mrs. Potter Paimer, who is st at the Carlton Hotel Mre. Taylor's talent for cotillon and leading, a talent widely recognized in New York, Washington and Chicago, will be in evi- dence in London shortly, when Mrs Mackey gives a cotillon in Mrs. Chatfield- Taylor's honor C. W. Kok representative of the St. Louls Exposition for Norway, Swegen and Denmark, has been in London for some days, en route to the countries for which he is specially deputed. Mr. Kohl- saat leaves to-day for Sweden to transact the major J of his exposition work He will go 10 the other countries later in the summer, returning to America in the saat, autumn. English newspapers have made a strange error lately by heralding Mrs. Laurence Drummond as “‘one of the great American WBstesses in London.” The fact is Mrs. Drummond is English of the Eng- lish. Bhe was a Miss Katherine Mary Antrobus, daughter of one of the bankers Antrobus associated with Coutts. The mistake arose out of Mrs. Drummond’s long residence in America and Canada, when Captain Drummond was on Lord Mingo's staff. Mrs. Drummond's promi- nence at the moment is caused by the activity of the Ladies’ Empire Club, which she founded and of which she is secre- tary. Mre. Drummond was thought by many to have been the handsomest woman at the Delhi Durbar. Mrs. Clayton Glyn—Elinor Glyn, famous BUT HAS MEMBERSHIP OF NEARLY FOUR THOUSAND SRR A T A PROMINENT MEMBERS OF WORLD'S LARGEST WOM- AN'S CLUB AND ITS HOME. — = + as the author of ““The Visits of Eliza- beth”—expects to visit America soon and will be entertained both in Newport and Bar Harbor. Mrs. Glyn is a pretty young woman whose husband has a valuable estate called Sheering Hall in Essex. The portrait of Elizabeth in “The Visits” is that of Mrs. Glyn's great friend, Lady Angela Forbest, sister of the Duchess of Sutherland and Lady Warwick. Miss Agnes Andrews of Seymour, In- diana, arrived in London last week and safled for America August 3. Miss An- drews has traveled for a year alone on the Continent, showing what an inde- pendent American girl can do in that line. She has spent most of the time in Germany, Switzerland and France. = ot %yyzzf o -~ - - i Is the Biggest and Richest Organization of Its Kind in the World, With - Cards and Billiards Among the Best Patronized of Its Many Feminine Attractions. ONDON, Aug. 8.—~There was never anything in the line of women's clubs. either in America or England, like “The Ladies’ Army and Navy Club,” which has suddenly become “the” thing in London. Although It was born only a year ago, it now has 3500 members, and is going to have 4000 before this year is out. It has just taken over a big and famous 0ld hotel in the very heart of the fashionable shopping district, and is estimating its annual income at $45,000 from annual dves alone, $20,000 from rents of Its bedrooms and $10.000 from profits on its food and wines—with a surplus over all running expenses of $17,500 # vear. The irreverent call this surprising new institution “the Amazons and Mer- maids,” only near relations of men who hold, or have held, commissions in the army or navy being admitted to membership. Other folk, yet more irreverent. style the new concern “The Ladies’ Rag,' for the reason that the historic “Arm§ and Navy ('l}lh." from which the ladies have borrowed their name, has been known by theé nickname of “The Rag” for time out of mind. The building into which this biggest and richest of women's clubs has just was moved occupies a whole block in Burlington Gardens, just off Piccadilly. It once the Bristol Hotel. the historic hostelry many times sheltering the late King of Italy and other royal guests. But the club teas, receptions and anwual dinners so char- acteristic of the average “socfal” club in England aren’t in favor at the ladies’ edition of tie Mrs. Dundas and its other belleve in individual rather than co-operative club entertaining and are determined to de- their ecfforts as an executive staff to making the club members comfort~ The members are at liberty to seek their social life where they will. The Ladies’ Army and Navy, like most English women’s clubs, differ from the American women's club in that it doesn’t attempt to educate anybody. chestra in attendance. “Rag” at all. adherents vote able. othe The English club women take it for grantcd that they can get cducation else= where, so intellectual improvement in the wav of lectures and literary meetings are tabooed. The club’s foundation is the need for resting places other than hotels by women whose homes are more or less inaccessible. and who by joine ing together can buy seolid comfort at a re: of the women who belong to the ladies’ “Rag" are able to pay tel accommoda- tion in London, but they like to saye money j most fashion= able and comfortable of clubs costs them $25 a year dues, r from 5 cents up to $185 a night; breakfast, 25 cents; luncheon, 5 cents: dinners, 75 cents— which is about half the rate of the average first-class hotel in London The Ladies' Army and Navy Club grew out of ome clever woman's head. - so Type Set by Telegraph. PARIS, Aug. 8.—A new typesetting ma- chine for composing by telegraph is being exhibited in Paris in the offices of the Temps. It consists in reality of four separate machines. The first resembles an ordinary typewriter, by means of which the characters are inscribed on a band of paper by a pécullar system of perforations. This can be telegraphed anywhere and distributed in thousands of coples without necessitating any tran- scription. The band of paper, when it ar- rives in a printing office, is simply passed through the apparatus number four and the composition is done. Peasant Woman Silences King. BELGRADE, Servia, Aug. §—King Peter is playing Haroun Al Raschid, go- ing around his capital early in the morn- ing or late at night incognito. He buys his own vegetables occasionally in market at 5 o'clock in the morning. The other day he had a lively controversy with an aged peasant woman about the price until she silenced him by saying jhat the cause of high prices was the heavy taxes pald to keep up the King and the Government. A staff of sixty servants is already hired and the club also supports a little army of clerks, typists, hairdressers and manicure girls. The dining-room, sald to be the finest clubroom in London, will seat 200 at a pinch and 180 is the usual numbe: served. Members have a cozy retreat, too, where they can buy as little us a single ham sandwich if they want it or a modest bowl of soup, with- out the necessity of everybody's knowing about this little economy. In the big dining-rooms everything is table d'hote. The Ladies’ Army and Navy Club is one of two women's organizations in London which boasts a billiard-room, and there's to be a big billiard match be- fore long when the only “lady billlard marker” in London will preside. The click of the ivory can be heagd in that billiard-room pretty steadily from 10 in the morning till 11 at night, 311 it is an interesting and rather significant fact that the billiard-room is open even on Sundays after 3 in the afternoon. And don't suppose that these up-to-date women play billiards without stakes. Likewise the cardroom is a lively and sometimes a costly place—Sunday or any other day. Theoretically, at least, you may not play whist for more than 25 cents a point, or bridge for more than 2 cents a point, or piquet for 1 cent a point, or bezique for 4 cents a hundred—but that doesn’t mean that devotees of bridge, for instance, do not exchange a good bit of money back and forth in the course of a long hard afternoon and evening, broken only by an hour for dinner, and fifteen minutes for a cigarette thereafter. There is a smoking-room, of course, but you can smoke also in the billiard-room and in the lounging room. Another rule is that no member may run up an account. She has to pay on the spot for everything she gets. P There is a special room for bridge and superb apartments in the way of pub- lic and private drawing-rooms, lounging rooms and conservatories. Some of the members take rooms for the year round. There are fifty-four bedrooms and the bath arrangements are luxuriously modern and complete. Private entertaining is done at the club by members on an claborate scale with the resident or- The present secretary, Mrs. G. A. Dundas, whose army connections are of long and honored standing, saw the fallacy of social clubs and clubs run with no particular idea of business behind them. So she became a promoter in a fashion that would have done credit to Plerpont Morgan. Perhaps the fact that her offices in the Walsingham House were under the same roof as those of the redoubtable Ernest Terah Hooley gave point to her pen, although her scheme proved as sound as most of the celebrated Hooley schemes proved shady. She started the club on very Mttle capital, but when its success was so great that it became evident it must move out of its first home in Dover street before It was a year old, she put forth a scheme for the issue of 12500 6 per cent shares of $ each, in order to get the Bristol Hotel on a lease of fifty-three years. Most of the stock was taken by the members, and according to the semi-annual lssued last week, that stock was an uncommonly good investment. One result of the financial, as well as social, success of the club is that its secretary has been conBidering the plan of going over to America to start a similar institution in New York. The Ladies’ Army and Navy Club claims other reasons for being the biggest woman's club in the world than the mere size of its membership list. All sorts of important people belong to it. Her Serene Highness Princess Edward of Saxe-Weimar, for whose sake her late husband gave up a throme and con- tracted a morganatic alllance, is president. Her Serene Highness took with her to the club recently the King's sister. Princess Christian, who is keenly inter- ested In everything military and naval. Lady Jane Taylor. sister of the Mar- quis of Tweeddale and the Dowager Duchess of Wellington, was one of Mrs. ' Dundas’ chief backers, and is so keen on the idea that she wants to go over and help if a similar institution is started in America. Anether distinguished member is the Viscountess Wolseley, wife of the former commander-in-chief of the army. Others are Mrs. Dick Cunyngham, lady-in-waiting to the Princess Christian, and Lady Napier of Magdala, widow of the distinguished field masr shal.