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A table d'hôte menu from the dinner for Walter Damrosch at the Lotos Club, 1893.

The Lotos Club is a gentleman's club founded in 1870 in New York City by a young group of writers and critics. Mark Twain said it was the "Ace of Clubs".^[1] In its current operation it has been housed since 1947 in Richard Howland Hunt's house, 5 East 66th Street, built in 1900, commissioned by Margaret Shepard as a wedding gift for her daughter, Mrs. William Jay Schieffelin. The club, named tongue-in-cheek for the forgetfulness of care exhibited by the Lotos-Eaters of the Odyssey and taking its motto from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Lotos-Eaters"

In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon,^[2]

has always had a literary and artistic bent, with the result that it has accumulated a noted collection of American paintings. The Lotos Club issues a Medal of Merit. Its state dinners (1893 menu at right) are legendary conventions of scholars, artists and sculptors, collectors and connoisseurs, writers and journalists.

It was at the Lotos club that George Harvey, editor of Harper's Weekly, sent up his first trial balloon by proposing Woodrow Wilson for the Presidency.^[3]

[edit] Notes

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