Aug 7, 2016

Dear friends and followers,

Over the past little while, I’ve introduced a few of the characters from the novel. You may have noticed that all of them are male. This is perhaps to be expected, given the setting: there aren’t many female members in a gentlemen’s club, I think. Today, however, I’m pleased to introduce one of the women in the novel: Martha Garrett, wife of Edward Garrett.

Ladies’ clubs did exist, incidentally: just like gentlemen’s clubs, offering the same sort of services, but for women only. The University Women’s Club, founded in 1886 as the University Club for Ladies, is still "women only" today.

In the novel, Martha Garrett mentions having lunch at the Cavendish: that would be what is today the New Cavendish Club, founded in 1920 expressly for the ladies of the Voluntary Aid Detachment, or VAD. VAD nurses were not the same as military nurses: the latter were career women with stringent medical training, while the VADs were volunteers who might have had no prior experience. There was apparently some friction between the two at the beginning of the first World War, lessening as the war dragged on.

If the Cavendish was supposed to be for the VADs, would Martha Garrett, as a former military nurse, have been a member? I don’t know, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have let a trivial detail like that stop her.