Ever since the publication in 1973 of Jean Raspail’s book, The Camp of the Saints, we have entertained ourselves at the thought of boatloads of brown migrants from the third world landing on the shores of the French Riviera, and snickered at the discomfiture of the poor French having to put up with the rabble. There goes the French Riviera, we joked with our usual smug schadenfreude. Instead, the French got the rabble of Soviet oligarchs buying up their seaside villas, while we got the sainted migrants landing on Manhattan’s inner sanctum and demanding admission.
While we reminisced about the old days in the Grill Room bar deep inside the Club with all the ancient heraldry around us, we could hear a chant rising up from the street:
“Boolah, boolah…boolah, boolah!
In our three-martini-lunch stupor, we could hardly believe our ears. This can’t be happening. Fortunately for us, the Club’s staff was able to communicate with the rabble outside in their own language. Most of them anyway. Mercifully, our chief of staff “Tony” (José Antonio de Ybarra y Spinoza–he was of the minor nobility in Spain) calmed everything down, for now. But we couldn’t get out of the building, and home on the 6:50 train to Greenwich. Couldn’t they have gone to the Harvard Club or the Princeton Club? Just down the street.
The Club’s concierge immediately started to make reservations for all of us in the bar to be airlifted by helicopter from the Club’s roof to the roof of the old PanAm building across the street. And from there we could get to the trains below in Grand Central. He regretted that only coach seats were available on the chopper, and would that be OK? But we probably wouldn’t make the 6:50 train. He was sure we could make the 7:28.
