Clover-Club-Winter_M.. - Tales of the Cocktail

“Who enters here leaves care behind,
leaves sorrow behind, leaves petty
envies and jealousies behind.”
Clover Club is available for private parties.
For more information, please call (718) 855-7939.
So went the motto of the original Clover
Club, a select group of Philadelphia
journalists who, from 1882 until the
1920’s met once a month at the
Bellevue Hotel to eat and drink and
talk. The only people the above words didn’t
necessarily apply to were their guests, celebrities
of the day who were invited to address the club
and were heckled relentlessly once they did—the
more pretentious or self-important they were,
the worse they got it. But they came anyway.
Maybe it was because “Major” Moses P. Handy,
the club’s president, knew everyone who was
anyone and was liked by them all. Or maybe it
was the challenge—if you could get over with
the Clover Club, you could get over anywhere.
Probably, though, they came and took their
lumps because of George Boldt. Boldt, you see,
was the Bellevue’s manager, and—in all matters
pertaining to food and drink, anyway—he was a
perfectionist. To sit at his table was worth
a little ribbing. Throw in a couple of the club’s
famous cocktails, and you’d be singing along with
the best of ‘em:
“While we live we live in clover;
When we die we die all over!”