The Lotos Club is one of the oldest literary and arts clubs in the United States. For more than a century and a half, since its birth on March 15, 1870, it has been a preeminent New York club. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), an early member, called Lotos The Ace of Clubs.
It began in February 1870, when a half dozen young writers, journalists and critics met and decided to form a new club. They wanted to bring together journalists, literary men, artists, members of the musical and dramatic professions, and “such merchants and professional gentlemen of artistic tastes and inclination.” The founders took the Club’s name and unusual spelling from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s popular poem, “The Lotos Eaters,” with the idea that the name conveyed “an idea of rest and harmony.” Two lines of this poem, “In the afternoon they came unto a land / In which it seemed always afternoon,” were selected as the motto of the club.