‘A very timid start’?: The Sydney French Club, 1885–1893
School of History Seminar Series
Speaker: Les Hetherington, PhD Candidate, School of History, ANU
In March 1893 visiting author Robert Louis Stevenson said of Sydney’s Cosmopolitan Club, founded in January 1885 as the French Association, and later known as the French Club, or cercle française, that he owed it the expense of the journey to Paris and back. The dinner Stevenson had been given by the club, he said, had satisfied his ‘Samoan dream’ of visiting Paris again ‘to enter a French restaurant, drink good wine, and meet French gentlemen’