A Club’s Life

by Ormonde de Kay, Harvard Club, 490 pages.

While James Tertius de Kay (see directly above) was writing his saga of the Macedonian , his brother Ormonde, a long-time contributor to this magazine, was busy tracing the history of an institution that has so far enjoyed a life span seventeen years longer than that of the frigate. The Harvard Club of New York City was founded in 1865 and, Harvard being Harvard, has had its share of impressive and intriguing members. Ormonde signed up to chronicle their interaction with their school’s club, and soon found himself so absorbed in the story that it took him five and a half years and 1,257 pages of typescript to relate. But just as his brother did with the far-ranging warship, Ormonde has marshaled an immensity of disparate facts into a lively, coherent, and consistently readable narrative.